At the UN headquarters in New York, 116 countries voted in favour of a resolution introduced by Germany, expressing grave concern about Afghanistan’s humanitarian situation, particularly the rights of women and girls under Taliban rule.
The United States and Israel voted against, while a dozen countries, including China and Pakistan, abstained.
Nearly 70 countries criminalise people for being gay, with some even using the death penalty.
The Tasmanian Refugee Legal Service (TRLS) is representing a growing number of onshore LGBTQIA+ clients seeking asylum who fear persecution in their home country.
“I think that having had education removed from you for some block of time, which is true for all of our young women, makes them their own advocates for school in really different ways, based on their lives and their family situations,” Hertzog said.
“But it does create this kind of shared camaraderie and gratitude that crosses over those country lines and experiences.”
Fifteen years ago, UN Women was established with a bold mission: to drive real and lasting change for all women and girls.
In that time, the world has seen undeniable change. More girls are in school. More women sit at decision-making tables. Gender equality has been written into more laws, policies and constitutions that ever before.
But today, as UN Women marks its 15th anniversary, we are also facing an uncomfortable truth: the push for equality is losing ground.
Fifteen years of UN Women: A call to action, not complacency. By Simone Clarke, Pearls & Irritations
Ahmad and his family have spent the past three and a half years living in limbo after fleeing the Taliban for Pakistan. He has now waited more than 42 months to hear a response to his Refugee and Humanitarian visa application from the Australian government. As Pakistani authorities boost efforts to deport migrants like Ahmad's family back to Afghanistan, he is fearing persecution and even death at the hands of the Taliban.
Indonesia – a land of beautiful beaches, dense jungles and green mountains – is anything but paradise for the thousands of refugees trapped within its borders. Known among refugees as “The Green Hell,” it is a prison without walls, a place where beauty conceals a reality of despair.
Opinion : The Green Hell. By Zohal Azra, Right Now (Human Rights in Australia)
Nearly a third of the population of Pacific island nation Tuvalu has applied for a new visa scheme that would allow them to relocate to Australia.
Australia is offering 280 visas annually to Tuvaluan citizens under the Falepili Union treaty — a landmark agreement billed as the world’s first climate migration deal.
Citizens of the climate change-threatened Polynesian nation are being encouraged to apply as rising seas threaten to engulf the tiny Pacific nation.
Rapper Kanye West was denied entry to Australia over antisemitic song lyrics, Immigration Minister Tony Burke has revealed.
Mr Burke told the ABC's Afternoon Briefing the musician, who goes by Ye, had a valid visa cancelled by officials in his department after releasing a song titled Heil Hitler.
Mr Burke did not say there was a permanent ban on the rapper, pointing out visa applications were reassessed each time in accordance with the law.
The U.S. State Department has moved $250 million to the Department of Homeland Security for voluntary deportations by migrants without legal status, a spokesperson said, an unprecedented repurposing of funds that have been used to aid refugees uprooted by war and natural disasters.
The federal opposition will adopt a more empathetic approach to migrants that seeks to emphasise people’s positive contribution to Australia, says the new shadow immigration minister, Paul Scarr, drawing a line under the harsh anti-immigration rhetoric deployed under Peter Dutton.
Azar has not slept properly in days.
In May, her 70-year-old mother Frances went to Iran to see her sisters — her first visit to the country in roughly a decade.
Frances is now one of around 3,000 Australians and their families registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) for assistance to leave — almost two weeks after Israeli bombs started falling on the capital Tehran.
Laws designed to put certain migrants behind bars if they are deemed to threaten community safety have effectively failed, the immigration minister has conceded.
Tony Burke said the bar in the legislation, which was altered after a High Court case, was too high for anybody to have met.
What's next?
The government passed another law last year allowing Australia to pay other countries to take members of the NZYQ cohort, a law the High Court is now testing after the government paid Nauru to accept three of them.
Preventative detention laws for migrants have failed, Tony Burke concedes. By Tom Crowley, ABC News
When my parents first arrived in Australia, they thought the government had put them in a five-star hotel. The Midway Migrant Hostel was just a group of sturdy brick buildings that looked like brown slab cakes – but compared to the cardboard and plastic tents in the camp at the Thai–Cambodian border where they’d been staying only a month before, these buildings were evidence of a life after death: the death of half of our family in the Killing Fields.
In this glorious afterlife, the residents of the Midway Migrant Hostel even had visitors, souls so pure and kind that they could only be sent from God. And indeed they were.
A regional GP tells a parliamentary committee that 95 per cent of women she sees for reproductive care are choosing abortions so they don't breach visa conditions.
The inquiry hears that many PALM scheme workers live in substandard housing.
And while it’s critical that there is a focus on this lethal lack of aid for Palestinians, the daily killing and maiming of children has become an afterthought. This is my fifth mission to Gaza since the horrors of 7 October, and in all that time almost nothing has been done to stop the world’s deadliest conflict for children in recent memory. There have been more than 50,000 children reported killed or injured in 20 months. Fifty thousand.
Israel, please let aid organisations do our jobs in Gaza. By James Elder, Unicef, The Guardian
Created in 2024, the People Fleeing Conflict Program from Western Sydney University was designed to support Palestinian, Lebanese and other people seeking refuge in Australia by providing a safe environment where students can work towards achieving their academic and personal goals.
The Sydney program taking Roua closer to her dream of being a nurse. By Ellie Busby, SMH
"In the past, the Australian music industry felt very white, very male-dominated, very rock-oriented.
"Because GRID (Grassroots in Development) is open-minded, it supports diverse artists and genres. Their music tells stories of people coming from other countries, particularly from war-torn countries and places where life is a struggle," Ma said.
For Baraka, who quit a full-time job in construction to chase his music dream, recent success is sweet, but his goal is to touch people through his songs.
How Fiston beat the odds to crack an $8bn Aussie industry and go global. By Sandra Fulloon, SBS News
Today, on World Refugee Day 2025, close to one in ten Australians is a refugee or descendant of someone displaced.
By the end of this year, Australia will resettle its one-millionth refugee since the end of World War II.
This is a legacy built through decades of bipartisan policy, community support, and the belief that when people are given safety and opportunity, they can contribute and thrive. It’s also a legacy that stands in contrast to our harsh treatment of people seeking asylum by boat, which continues to rightly attract criticism. Still, when it comes to refugee resettlement, Australia has a foundation of which we can all be proud.
The question is whether we will rise to meet the moment we are in now……………
…..In the past five years, nearly one million people from just eight refugee-producing countries were granted permits to live and work in OECD countries and Brazil through regular migration programs. That’s a 3-to-1 ratio compared to traditional resettlement.
Australia has played a key role in some of these early efforts. The Skilled Refugee Labour Agreement Pilot, developed in partnership with Talent Beyond Boundaries, has enabled hundreds of skilled refugees to migrate to Australia to fill workforce gaps. The Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Pilot program has supported communities to sponsor and provide settlement support to incoming refugee families. And just last year, the Refugee Student Settlement Pathway was launched, allowing young refugees to study at Australian universities with a pathway to permanent protection.
Sussan Ley didn't feel the Liberal Party alienated migrants in the last federal election, but accepts that some voters felt that way.
"I want to know why they felt that way," she told The Feed. "Because I certainly, as the deputy leader in the last parliament, never, ever felt that way."
Ley's predecessor, Peter Dutton linked record levels of migration — which peaked at 536,000 in 2022-23, but which Treasury estimates will return to 260,000 next year — with exacerbating demand on housing supply and pushing up prices.
The extent of the sexual violence is such that it is at least condoned, if not actually encouraged by leadership. It has been reported time and time again since the conflict began. Sexual violence is being used as a weapon, a tactic of war and the pattern of attacks raises the possibility of genocide. The US issued a statement in early 2025 that, based on available information, genocide was being committed in Sudan. At times, perpetrators have committed attacks with particular cruelty, using firearms, knives and whips to intimidate or coerce, alongside derogatory, racist or sexist slurs and death threats. Women and girls are not just being left vulnerable – they are being actively targeted.
Sudan: The horrors intensify as millions are abandoned. By Brenda Fitzpatrick, P&I
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