An asylum seeker who was detained on Nauru for a decade says the hardest part about life in detention was feeling unheard and invisible.
Despite being brought to the Australian mainland, he has no pathway to a permanent visa.
Nazim was detained on Nauru for over ten years. He says he's lost everything. AAP, SBS News
The trauma and torture of Australian border violence and its offshore detention centre has never left me, even though it’s been four years since I left Nauru and came to the US to start my new life here.
The UK government's plan to resettle asylum seekers in Rwanda has been deemed unlawful, after advocates challenged the policy in the courts.
It's hoped a new federal government pilot program to help improve digital literacy for migrant refugee women will break down barriers for those settling in Australia. Research suggests almost one in four people in Australia are left out.
Breaking down barriers for migrant women in the digital world. SBS TV News (2 mins)
The last refugee has now been evacuated from Nauru. Yet the Australian-run detention centre remains ‘ready to receive and process’ any new unauthorised maritime arrivals at an annual cost of $350m.
Guardian Australia chief political correspondent Paul Karp and reporter Eden Gillespie tell Jane Lee about what refugees and asylum seekers detained for more than a decade make of the decision, and what it means for Australia’s deterrence policy.
A group that assists refugees in securing employment will get a financial boost of $1.5 million.
Boost for refugees looking for work, Labor defends visa cost increase. By Finn McHugh, SBS News
The last refugee is off Nauru, but Australians will still pay $350m a year to keep the island’s detention centre ready for future arrivals.
Funding of $1.5m is to be spent by the Federal government to help refugees find permanent work in Australia.
New money to help refugees into work. Reporter: Sara Tomevska, SBS News (2:02 mins)
A new report from the Human Rights Commission has damned Australia’s use of hotel detention as a breach of basic standards – but it is a practice the government has no plans to abandon.
Hotel detention breaches human rights. By Denham Sadler, The Saturday Paper
For instance, if an Act were designed to prohibit executive decisions that run counter to the international human rights treaties our parliaments have already ratified, we might hope that this would lessen the harms that have flowed from our unconstrained governments in policies such as those on detention of asylum seekers and children, mixing of adult and juvenile offenders as well as accused persons and convicted persons in detention centres, compensation of wrongly convicted persons, whistleblowers making genuine public interest disclosures, compensation of Indigenous peoples for theft of their lands and children, protection of Australians and others from climate change, and protection of Australians from propaganda for war.
Yes, of course we need a Human Rights Act! By Bronwyn Kelly, Pearls and Irritations
The last refugee held by Australia on Nauru has been evacuated off the island, flying into Brisbane on Saturday night, marking the end – at least for now – of more than a decade of offshore processing on the Pacific island.
However the Australian government says it remains committed to offshore processing as a policy. It maintains an offshore detention centre in abeyance on the island, at an annual cost of $350m, which it says is “ready to receive and process any new unauthorised maritime arrivals”.
“Offshore processing failed to achieve its stated objectives of ‘stopping the boats’ or ‘saving lives at sea’,” Madeline Gleeson (senior research fellow at the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW) says. “During the height of this policy, more asylum seekers were trying to reach Australia by boat than at any previous time. What it was effective at doing was dehumanising people who came here in search of safety, and scoring political points.”
Barnaby Joyce appears to have blindsided Peter Dutton with his support for the Murugappan family to stay in Australia, linking his position to his pro-life stance, a newly-released letter reveals.
June 18 - 24 is Refugee Week. It’s all about celebrating the positive contributions made by refugees to Australian society. We find out more about what it means to be a refugee and meet some kids who came to Australia as refugees.
Refugee Week 2023. Behind the News, ABC TV. Lyeba Khan, Reporter
When Shiroq Majid fled Iraq and found herself half a world away in the NSW New England town of Armidale in 2019, she lacked friends and the language skills to make them.
The international language of sport has helped her find both.
"The federal government makes decisions about how many people are able to move to Toowoomba, and we love being a refugee welcome zone, but we need to have federal government support when they make those decisions," Catholic Care executive director Kate Venables said.
Last week's sinking of a fishing boat crowded with migrants trying to get from Libya to Italy sparked arrests, violent protests and questions about authorities’ failure to act or find a long-term solution to the issue. But many human rights advocates are frustrated that the world seems to have already moved on and that the resources and media attention being dedicated to the Titan rescue efforts far outweigh those for the sunken migrant ship.
Serious and prolonged human rights issues of holding people in hotel immigration detention have been highlighted by Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner. The Department of Home Affairs has responded to the Commissioner's report by accepting only two of her 24 recommendations, but says it is changing the policy.
The first thing that struck me was the proximity. Other guests stayed in the same hotel, coming and going without realising they shared the place with people who were imprisoned – who looked out their windows as the world went by in the city centre but were unable to join it. The invisibility of detainees within hotels themselves emphasised their political invisibility.
An inspection report by the Australian Human Rights Commission has found serious human rights concerns persist in the use of hotels as Alternative Places of Detention (APODs) within Australia’s immigration detention system.
The report found detention in hotels had severe negative impacts on people’s physical and mental health, which became progressively worse the longer a person was detained.
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