Tag Archives: Nauru
3 June 2014
A confidential report that was obtained by The Guardian Australia documents the desperate state of healthcare for families in Australian detention facilities on Nauru. The report writes that children on Nauru do not receive an adequate health screening and that up to 50 percent of them could carry latent tuberculosis. Furthermore, it raises serious worries that Nauru does not have a child protection framework in place, that there is a significant risk that children are sexually abused and that most pregnant women have a depression. (more…)
Source: The Guardian | Nauru detention: serious health risks to children revealed in confidential report
Source: The Guardian | Nauru: Human Rights Commission will accept leaked report as evidence
19 February 2014
During a riot in a detention camp in Papua New Guinea, one asylum seeker was killed and at least 77 were injured. Accounts as to what caused the riot differ; Australian authorities claim the violence began when detainees forced their way out of the center, but refugee advocates insist it was sparked when local residents and police stormed the facility, attacking the asylum seekers.
The facility is part of Australia’s Pacific Solution on the basis of which Australia processes and detains asylum seekers in centers on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru. The asylum seekers are sent there after trying to get to Australia, often in unsafe boats and with the help of people smugglers in Indonesia. (more…)
Source: Reuters | One dead, many hurt as asylum seekers riot at PNG detention camp
22 July 2013
A boat carrying 89, mainly Iranian, asylum-seekers was intercepted off the coast of northern Australia. This occurred a day after the country announced that asylum seekers arriving by boat can no longer be resettled in Australia as refugees. The Australian Immigration Minister Tony Burke stated that the group can either press an asylum claim in Papua New Guinea, or be transferred to a third state.
The announcement of the new immigration policy was reportedly followed by violent riots in an Australian-run immigration detention camp in Nauru over the weekend where hundreds of asylum seekers escaped detention.
Source: Al Jazeera | Australia intercepts boat with asylum-seekers
17 May 2013
On 16 May 2013, legislation passed the Australian Senate to excise the entire Australian mainland from the migration zone. All asylum seekers who arrive anywhere in Australia by boat are now eligible to be sent to Nauru or Papua New Guinea for ‘regional processing’.
With the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issuing scratching reports on the processing centers on Nauru and Papua New Guinea, there was a failed attempt by the Greens, an opposition party in the Australian Parliament, to strike down the legislation.
The Australian Government, which is dealing with an increasing number of boats arrivals, says the legislation is a deterrence measure. The idea was one of 25 recommendations that was put forward by an expert panel on asylum seekers and introduced to the Parliament by the Government last year.
Source: ABC News | Parliament excises mainland from migration zone
23 November 2012
In a report published on 23 November 2012, Amnesty International condemns Australia’s newly reinstated policy of offshore processing of asylum seekers in Nauru. During a three-day inspection of the facility, it found a toxic mix of uncertainty, unlawful detention and inhumane conditions creating an increasingly volatile situation on Nauru, amounting to breaches of international human rights law by both the Australian and Nauruan government. According to Amnesty, the dire circumstances that the asylum seekers are facing further highlights why a developed country with a functioning refugee processing system should never send asylum seekers to a country without existing capacity to care for, process and protect them.
Source: Amnesty International | Nauru Camp A Human Rights Catastrophe With No End In Sight
Source: BBC | Australia asylum camp in Nauru 'cruel and degrading'