Detention, rejection, and sound bites : refugees in the Commonwealth

The UN reported last month that global forced displacement has reached a record high of some 60 million people, and the UNHCR expects this humanitarian emergency to continue to develop in 2016. Refugees are a high profile issue across the Commonwealth with many member states urgently adapting responses and policies to refugees, asylum seekers, as well as attempting to mitigate the factors that encouraging or force people to leave their homes.

In Australia, the High Court ruled this week that the offshore detention of asylum seekers on the Pacific island of Nauru, which doctors, journalists, and asylum seekers themselves have variably described as unsafe and substandard, is legal. It paves the way for the for 267 asylum-seekers currently in Australia, including 39 children and 33 babies born in Australia to be deported to Nauru. The decision sparked a public outcry; UNICEF issued a statement saying that the ruling was “unreasonable” and “has no bearing on Australia’s moral responsibility or its obligations to protect the rights of children in accordance with international human rights law”. Mandatory detention, however, is not a new policy. It was introduced in 1992 after Bob Hawke’s government announced the country could be “on the threshold of a major wave of unauthorised boat arrivals from south-east Asia”. The time asylum seekers spend in Australian detention centres has blown out to a record high under the Turnbull government, with the latest statistics from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection showing that in December, people in onshore immigration detention had been there for an average 445 days. What the Guardian refers to as a “militarised solution” is hotly debated with the citizens critical of the government’s response; a poll in September showed a clear majority of Australians back the decision to increase Australia’s intake of Syrian refugees, but most people also think the Abbott government has handled the issue poorly.

In Canada, where Prime Minister Trudeau’s new refugee resettlement plan, which will accommodate 25,000 by the end of February 2016, polls suggest opposition to the plan in the wake of the Paris terror attacks was as high as 60 percent. The Trudeau government though has been widely lauded for its new policy, with new cabinet commended by The Canadian Council of Refugees (CCR) for the inclusion of “refugees” in the name of the Minister’s expanded portfolio, and the increase of the maximum age for dependents to 22 years in the definition of family member. The January CCR report Equally Human, Equally Entitled to Rights submitted to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CECSR) on Canada’s compliance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights details current problems, from immigration status as a form of discrimination to delayed family reunification, as well as steps needed to ensure rights are protected.

Canada’s generosity though is still dwarfed by states like Germany, which received more than 315,000 new asylum applications by the end of October 2015, or Syrian neighbours like Jordan, currently hosting between 630,000 and 1.27 million Syrian refugees. The more cynical commentators called the widely publicised arrival of the first 163 refugees in Toronto on UN Human Rights Day, December 10, a “media spectacle”. In addition to delaying his plans, Trudeau’s goal for resettlement comes with major caveats: two-fifths of the refugees expected by the end of this month, for example, will have to be privately sponsored, and reports indicate adult single males may not be able to gain access as they represent a security risk. Canada is thought to be unique in explicitly prioritising based on gender or sexual orientation. The government programme, in trying to identify both those “most in need” and representing “a lower risk”, will put women at risk, families and members of the LGBTI community first. But regardless of the various restrictions, Trudeau must be congratulated for the undeniable progress he has achieved for his country on the refugee issue. While John McCallum, immigration, refugees and citizenship minister, recently stated Canada intends to increase the numbers admitted to at least 35,000 by the end of 2016, under former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, only 3,089 Syrian refugees were admitted from 2014 to 2015.

Cyprus was urged by the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture (SPT) this week to improve conditions in migrant detention centres. The SPT delegation, which monitors how States that have ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT) are meeting their treaty obligations, visited the Menoyia Detention Centre, where people are held pending the outcome of their asylum application and which has in the past seen riots, protests and hunger strikes.

Malaysia, which is not a signatory of international conventions on refugees, is host to more than 150,000 refugees and asylum seekers, the majority of whom are from Myanmar. More than 45,000 of them are Rohingya (mostly Muslims from Myanmar’s Rakhine state) according to the U.N. refugee agency, many more than almost any other country. About 95,000 people made the dangerous crossing from the coasts of Myanmar and Bangladesh to Malaysia since 2014 — over 1,000 died in the attempt. Following international criticism earlier last year, Indonesia and Malaysia eventually agreed to admit up to 7,000 Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants on the condition that another country accepts them by May 2016. But with Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia all rejecting further arrivals and even turning away boats struggling in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, more lives will undoubtedly be at risk. Mohiuddin Mohamad-Yusof, president of the New York-based World Rohingya Organisation, warned that “200,000 Rohingyas may leave Rakhine state in 2016”. An October report published by Amnesty International entitled Deadly journeys: The refugee and trafficking crisis in Southeast Asia examines “inadequate” regional and international support to the refugees, and warns of another looming crisis.

Worrying is the massive conflation of terminology and soundbites around refugees and migrants; Amjad Saleem points out that a “genuine debate on the refugee crisis being diluted with a toxic debate on migration”. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Leaders’ Statement published after November’s CHOGM accepts that migration “can deliver economic and social benefits which improve the resilience and prosperity of Commonwealth member states”, but also decides to increase “efforts to address the causes of irregular migration”. Overall, the statement voices concern about “the increase in flows of refugees, asylum seekers and irregular migrants which entails suffering, abuse and exploitation”, but only points to the Valletta Summit on migration in reference to possible solutions. Just two weeks before CHOGM, European leaders had met in Valletta, Malta to formulate strategies to deal with the migrant crisis. The CHOGM leaders voiced their support for the Action Plan, designed to, amongst others, address the root causes of irregular migration and forced displacement, enhance cooperation on legal migration and mobility, and reinforce the protection of migrants and asylum seekers. But the summit focused on fostering cooperation between European and African Heads of State and Government, and the partnership between the EU and Africa — it appears there is little appetite amongst the Commonwealth leaders or within the Secretariat to formulate a Commonwealth-specific response or guidance on the issue.

With so many member states directly implicated, and many more indirectly affected an leadership both by, and within the Commonwealth is required. Commonwealth leaders and policy makers must observe the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, the rights and protections it awards to refugees, and the legal obligations of states it determines.