Australia jettisons humanitarianism

Australia’s Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment Act passed into law this week. Australia is now no longer obliged to adhere to the UN Refugee Convention – a treaty Australia was instrumental in constructing and implementing after the Second World War. The Act removes from the Maritime Powers Act of 2013 the phrase “In accordance with international law, the exercise of powers is limited in places outside Australia,” and adds “Failure to consider international obligations etc. does not invalidate authorization” and “Failure to consider international obligations etc. does not invalidate exercise of powers.”  Putting on paper the Australian Navy’s practice of hauling intercepted boats back to their origin in, for example, Sri Lanka, the bill explains: “To avoid any doubt… a vessel, aircraft or person may be taken (or caused to be taken) to a destination under section… whether or not Australia has an agreement or arrangement with any other country relating to the vessel or aircraft (or the persons in it)… and irrespective of the international obligations or domestic law of any other country.” 

Pre-empting its impact, in a section entitled Amendments if this Act commences after the Migration Amendment (Protection and Other Measures) Act 2014, the MMPLAB read: “It is irrelevant whether Australia has non-refoulement obligations in respect of an unlawful non-citizen... [And] an officer’s duty to remove as soon as reasonably practicable an unlawful non-citizen under section 198 [of the Migration Act, which outlines removal procedures for unlawful citizens] arises irrespective of whether there has been an assessment, according to law, of Australia’s non-refoulement obligations in respect of the non-citizen.” As one Australian legal researcher explained: “This is saying that Australia is now entitled to return an asylum seeker to a country where they have been, or know they may be, tortured or persecuted.”

 Experts say it reflects global trends of treating migration as a security problem. Anne Hammerstad, a lecturer at the UK’s University of Kent, told IRIN: “Part of the problem is that the whole migration topic has become securitized.” She argued that attitudes on migration have shifted - to the detriment of refugees - from humanitarian empathy to national security.

Since September 2013 Australia has run Operation Sovereign Borders (OSB), a military-led initiative the government describes as an effort to “to combat people-smuggling and protect Australia's borders”. Navy ships intercept boats carrying asylum seekers, who are then detained in off-shore processing centres, the conditions of which have been criticized repeatedly, including by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Boats may, indeed, have stopped arriving in Australia, but asylum seekers in Southeast Asia have not stopped undertaking perilous journeys. According to UNHCR data released in November, around 54,000 people (all but 1,000 departing from Bangladesh and Myanmar) have undertaken irregular maritime journeys in the region in 2014. These numbers are up from previous years, showing a 15 percent increase from 2013, and triple the number of departures from 2012.