UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon Has Asked Malcolm Turnbull To Rethink Australia’s Refugee Policy

Australia’s refugee policies have been pretty execrable for a long time, but 2015 was the year the rest of the world really began to take notice. In September the New York Times called Australia’s mandatory offshore detention regime “brutal” and “inexcusable”, while the United Nations’ Human Rights Council and Committee Against Torture have both been vocal in their condemnation of Australia’s approach to those seeking asylum. HRC nations ranging from Sweden and Norway to Iran and North Korea specifically called out Australia’s detention practices earlier this month.

Now the head of the UN himself is getting involved. The ASEAN summit is currently underway in Kuala Lumpur, and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s making hay on social media by uploading cutesy photos of himself wearing traditional garb and enthusiastically waving a little Australian flag around. But UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has punctured Malcolm’s fun-bubble — not only by personally urging the PM to rethink Australia’s commitment to locking innocent people up in offshore mental-illness camps in an informal meeting “on the margins” of the summit, but by releasing details of the conversation in a statement on the UN website.

“The Secretary-General also raised the refugee and migrant issue in the Asia Pacific region. Noting Australia’s longstanding commitment to refugee resettlement, the Secretary-General appealed to the Prime Minister to share responsibilities. The Secretary-General expressed concern over the detention conditions in Australia’s offshore processing centres and encouraged the Prime Minister to reconsider ‘Operation Sovereign Borders'”, the statement reads.

It’s unlikely Ban Ki-Moon’s words will have much effect on policy; a couple of weeks ago Immigration Minister Peter Dutton dismissed UN criticism outright, echoing former PM Tony Abbott’s assertion that “Australians are sick of being lectured to by the UN”.

But it’s equally unlikely the UN’s going to let up. In another statement released on November 20, the UN’s officially mandated Universal Children’s Day, Ban Ki-Moon said the following:

“Far too many children languish in jail, mental health facilities or through other forms of detention.  Some children are vulnerable because they are migrants, asylum seekers, homeless or preyed on by organized criminals.  Whatever the circumstances, the Convention dictates that the deprivation of liberty must be a measure of last resort, and for the shortest time … With that in mind, and further to a request by the General Assembly, the United Nations is preparing a Global Study that aims to shine a light on the scale and conditions of children deprived of their liberty and secure the protection of their rights.”

The extent to which that upcoming global study will scrutinise Australia’s practices remains to be seen, but given the UN’s increasing willingness to take Australia to task over offshore mandatory detention, the government’s headaches could be just beginning.

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Feature image via UN Spokesperson/Twitter.