Australia violated rights of asylum seekers held in Nauru, UN watchdog says

A UN watchdog has declared that the Australian government violated a human rights treaty by holding a group of asylum seekers, many of whom are minors, on Nauru, despite having been granted refugee status.

The UN Human Rights Committee claimed that Australia had violated both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the one protecting the right to contest a person’s detention in court.

In a statement released on Friday following Thursday’s ruling, committee member Mahjoub El Haiba said, “A state party cannot escape its human rights responsibility when outsourcing asylum processing to another state.”

The UN watchdog’s decision applies to two cases involving 25 refugees and asylum seekers who had to endure years of arbitrary detention in Nauru.

In both cases, the panel of 18 independent experts discovered that Australia had violated refugees’ rights, including those of underage children who had access to inadequate water and healthcare.

The refugees and asylum seekers from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar were intercepted while trying to reach Australia by boat in 2013, when they were aged between 14 and 17 years old.

Nearly all the minors suffered a deterioration in wellbeing there, including weight loss, self-harm, kidney problems and insomnia while in detention, it said.

The committee demanded that Australia pay the refugees adequate compensation and take steps to prevent repeating violations.

Although the committee has no authority to compel states to follow its decisions, its pronouncements have a reputational impact.

Australia’s government said it was considering the committee’s views and would give a response “in due course”.

The Australian government consistently asserts that it does not have effective control over regional processing centers, according to a Department of Home Affairs spokesman.

“We welcome Nauru’s continued partnership in the effective delivery of regional processing arrangements”.

Nauru President David Adeang’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Under Australia’s hardline policy introduced in 2012, the government sent thousands of refugees attempting to reach the country by boat to “offshore processing” centres.

They were held in two detention centres – one on Nauru and another, since shuttered, on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.

The UN committee rejected Australia’s claim that Nauru-related rights violations were not a matter of UN law.

Numerous European nations have been considering outsourcing their migration policies in ways similar to this.

Thursday’s decisions “send a clear message to all states: where there is power or effective control, there is responsibility”, El Haiba said.