The issue of refugee and asylum seekers has come to the attention of many people amongst the Australian societies and the international communities when the offshore processing and the mandatory detention policy of the Australian government undertaken in 2013. However, the actual issue concerned for years until August 2017, the Australian High Court ruling on the offshore processing of asylum claims the legal character of the offshore processing regime. That means the Australian government maintains the right to facilitate their detentions and offshore processing regime to asylum seekers waiting at the contemporary condition to apply for refugee visas to Australia mainland. This also means that the Australian government actions have violated international human rights laws.
This humanitarian crisis leads Australia’s asylum seeker policy to be a blight on the country’s aspiration of a ‘fair go’ for all. That becomes a terrific and problematic keynote to a successful multicultural nation and a liberal democratic political system like Australia. Initially, it begins with the “Pacific Solution” and the current “Operation Sovereign Borders”, and then explores further resettlement agreements with other countries, including Nauru and Manus Island, Papua New Guinea or Kyrgyzstan (Berlo, p. 35).
Whether or not the current Australian government is seeking ways to avoid receiving numerous people who are not Australian citizens, this is a hugely wrong policy that the Australian government is doing and the contradictory mandatory detention. Moreover, a series of governmental actions onto the refugee crisis contradicts to its past leniency of a welcome country to people who are seeking for help like the contemporary asylum seekers and refugees. In other words, they seek asylum.
Australia is not the only country that prevents migrants from arriving in the country. In the compatibility, the EU shares the same ideology with the Australian government alongside the history of the migrant flow. According to Perre et al. (2018), the European agenda on migration raises a number of concerns due to the security and value of the union and its member states, and it thus lets arguments escalated to top of the self-centred security issues linked with their political ideology of the past comprising of Populism, Eurocentrism, Xenophobia. Eventually, little knew the improvements kind of did, the total observations that all of the international communities have been able to document are to show that the EU is violating the 1949 Geneva Convention and the 1951 Refugee Convention. Australia was a signatory country with both of those documents.
There should be two dimensions of this issue supposed to distort the interpretations of refugee and asylum seekers. In one sentence, the border regime can be “legally and constitutionally valid” but the International Human Rights Laws and Treaties have been morally invalid, said the verdict Human Rights Law Centre legal advocacy director Daniel Webb (Hasham, para. 7). While Australia seeks and demonstrates persuasive evidence for the legal legislature to prevent taking “boat people” and detain them in limbo on a tiny island, it is clearly wrong for this experiment.
Why is it a so-called experiment? Firstly, it is brightly fair to look at the Foundation of International Human Rights Law under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and Australia is a signatory and has remained a supporter and ratified all of the major international human rights instruments. The foundation stated, “Through ratification of international human rights treaties, Governments undertake to put into place domestic measures and legislation compatible with their treaty obligations and duties.” (The Foundation of International Human Rights Law, para. 8) In this statement and Australia’s ratification and Australia domestic legal system have been lacking legal proceedings to protect and to fulfil human rights.
Secondly, there has been domestically lacked explicit scrutiny of offshore processing centres. Doussa (p. 50) highlighted that “Irrespective of legal arguments about the Commission’s extra-territorial jurisdiction, the practical reality is that offshore processing centres have not been subject to external scrutiny by the Commission or the Ombudsman. This means there has been insufficient independent analysis of the conditions in the centres.” Once again, this obviously contradicts the law, which is the Migration Act 1958.
None of the detainees knows how long they will be detained. But to actualize the truths happening and the future of the Australian government, there is now and will be tensions here and to the wider international communities and order. By all means, the Australian government must acknowledge its liberal profession. This is to determine that their best endeavours will consistently comply “their laws and constitutions to secure the settlement of such refugees in the territories, other than the metropolitan territory, for whose international relations they are responsible.” (Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, Article 19, p. 23)
Since WWII came to the end, the international expects to promote peace and thriving lives amongst the globe to all human beings. The proudly and successfully multicultural Australian nation must continue to uphold represent the universal recognition of the basic human rights and fundamental freedoms of all human dignity and justice for all of us – the Australian peoples and the universal values. This is because obligations are not merely applied with the Australian government and the Australian people but for the betterment and prosperity of the world nation as we are sharing the same ground of the Mother Earth.
“Interdependence obliges us to think of one world with a common plan”. (Pope Francis, Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home p.122)
Reference:
Berlo, PV 2017, “The Protection of Asylum Seekers in Australian-Pacific Offshore Processing: The Legal Deficit of Human Rights in a Nodal Reality”, Human Rights Law Review, volume 17, issue 1, pp. 33–71, viewed 25 April 2018, <https://doi-org.ezproxy1.acu.edu.au/10.1093/hrlr/ngw017>
Doussa, JV, Human Rights and Offshore Processing, viewed 25 April 2018, <http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UTSLawRw/2007/3.pdf?>
Hasham, N 2016, High Court finds offshore detention lawful, The Sydney Morning Herald, viewed 25 April 2018, <https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/high-court-finds-offshore-detention-lawful-20160203-gmk5q6.html>
Perre, N, Vries, M, Richards, H 2018, Refugee Crisis: three perspectives on the makings of a crisis, Refugee Law Initiative, School of Advanced Studies University of London, viewed 25 April 2018, <https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2018/04/16/refugee-crisis-three-perspectives-on-the-makings-of-a-crisis/>
United Nations, The Foundation fo International Human Rights Law, viewed 25 April 2018, <http://www.un.org/en/sections/universal-declaration/foundation-international-human-rights-law/index.html>
UNHCR, Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, viewed 26 April 2018, <http://www.unhcr.org/en-au/3b66c2aa10>
The Digerati Politics 