Conditions and Treatment of Asylum Seekers and Refugees at the Regional Processing Centres in the Republic of Nauru and Papua New Guinea

Liberty Victoria has consistently raised concerns about the deleterious effect that offshore detention has on the human rights and well-being of asylum seekers, and of the Australian government’s outsourcing and obfuscation of its responsibilities under both domestic and international law.[1]

To this end, Liberty Victoria refers to and wishes to endorse a previous joint submission made by Unicef Australia and the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) to the Senate Select Committee titled ‘Recent Allegations relating to the Conditions and Circumstances at Regional Processing Centre in Nauru’, dated 13 May 2015,[2] and the HRLC Submission “Inquiry into Manus incident”, dated 2 May 2015.[3]

The PNG and Nauru centres should be closed and the asylum seekers within brought to the Australian mainland for processing according to law.

[1]See ‘Statement on Report of Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers and Government Response’, 13 August 2012 (https://libertyvictoria.org.au/node/408); ‘Serious concerns about the PNG solution’, 24 July 2013 (https://libertyvictoria.org.au/node/520)., ‘Time to end the cruelty at Manus Island’, 18 February 2014 (https://libertyvictoria.org.au/node/405).  In addition, Liberty Victoria was a signatory to the 24 April 2015 Joint Statement with the Refugee Council calling for a Moratorium on offshore transfers (http://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/media/refugee-council-calls-for-immediate-moratorium-of-offshore-transfers/) (https://libertyvictoria.org.au/node/520)

[2] See [3.1] – [3.2(ii)].a

[3] See [5.1] – [5.3].