What’s wrong with offshore processing?
Whilst offshore processing has been used by the Australian government for decades, its problems and criticisms are lengthy, from poor conditions to extraordinary costs.
What is offshore processing in Australia?
Offshore processing is where people who arrive by boat seeking asylum are then transferred and held in processing centres or detention centres in another country. These centres are funded by the Australian government.
When did offshore processing start?
Offshore processing was first established in 2001 following the ‘Tampa affair’, where a large shipping boat rescued stranded asylum seekers from Afghanistan. The asylum seekers wished to be taken to Christmas Island, an external territory of Australia, but the boat was prevented from doing so by the Australian government, who hastily struck a deal with Nauru and later Papua New Guinea to process these asylum seekers. This became known as the ‘Pacific Solution’.
Whilst these centres closed in 2008 and 2003 respectively due to dwindling numbers of asylum seekers arriving by boat, they were later reopened in 2012 as Australia started seeing more boat arrivals.
What’s so bad about offshore processing?
Since its implementation, offshore processing has been criticised by human rights advocates, journalists, academics, medical professionals, as well as those held in the offshore facilities.
“I just simply couldn't believe that a wealthy, liberal democracy like Australia would be detaining refugees, and the vast majority of which successive of Australian governments have determined to be refugees,” says Dr Josh Watkins, lecturer of Global Studies at National University of Singapore.
Offshore processing presents a number of issues:
Cost
These offshore processing centres are contracted to private companies as well as the governments of the host countries. Canstruct, the company that the centre at Nauru, had a contract that totalled $1.82bn for a 5 year period. Costs for detaining these asylum seekers ranges from $829,000 per person per year, to up to $3.39m per person per year.
Conditions
Despite the large amounts poured into these offshore centres, these countries that are denser, poorer, and with far worse sanitary conditions to Australia; conditions were extremely poor.
“We used to stay in the line to get access to small things, for hours under the sun, for hours for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in between them, we had to stay in the line to get a like a razor,” says Behrouz Boochani, who was held on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea for 4 years. “And they didn't approve razor and these things for sometimes two months, three months.”
12 people have died from neglect, poor health, or suicide. Conditions are so bad that the Royal Australasian College of Physicians submitted a Senate inquiry “calling for the immediate cessation of onshore and offshore held immigration detention for those seeking asylum, due to the severe and often long-lasting physical and mental health impacts on those detained.”
“The risks of detention harms are amplified in offshore detention facilities on Nauru, Manus Island and Christmas Island, due to environmental and infrastructure challenges, limited access to specialist health services, and uncertainty around the future and settlement options.”
– The Royal Australasian College of Physicians
Care
Australia has an obligation to not send people back to danger, called non-refoulement obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention. This applies to anyone seeking protection who arrives on any territory that we own. As a way to seemingly work around this obligation, offshore processing allows genuine refugees to be held in these temporary detention facilities without necessarily resettling them in Australia, or forcing them to return to their country of origin.
Furthermore, the contracting of foreign governments and private companies obscures the direct responsibility the Australian government has to the people detained in these facilities. “It's clear under international law that Australia still retains responsibility for people once they're on Nauru and PNG, and Australian courts have also acknowledged that Australia has duty of care towards refugees in certain circumstances when they're on Nauru or PNG,” says Dr Sara Dehm, Faculty of Law lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney.
Case study
Not only does offshore processing present significant human rights concerns, but this approach to managing asylum seekers arriving by boat is being used as an example for other asylum seekers, as well as other countries.
“The Australian government is less interested in these questions of legal liability, but more interested in putting forward a broader deterrence framework to try and stop refugees coming because the conditions and offshore detentions are so harsh or intolerable, even,” says Dr Dehm.
“To use these people who the Australian Government themselves have assessed to be refugees, to use their dire circumstances that the Australian government has exasperated through offshore detention, as an advertising campaign to prevent future refugees and asylum seekers from seeking asylum in Australia, which is their legal right to do so, I find that sad and shocking.”
– Dr Josh Watkins
These policies are also being used as an example for other countries. “Tony Abbott famously attempted to sell it to European countries during the flight of primarily Syrians, but other refugees and asylum seekers from the Middle East and South Asia as well, into the European Union from 2014 to 2015,” says Dr Watkins.
“We're seeing the UK with the Rwanda plan, which is Australia's offshore processing, not just quietly but overtly promoted as a policy to be enacted,” says journalist for The Guardian Ben Doherty.
So what next?
As of March 2024, there were still 54 people being held on Nauru, with the policy of offshore processing still being retained; offshore processing is not going anywhere. Yet its issues remain.
“Reform is necessary,” says Dr Watkins. “That the consequences of not reforming the international refugee regime, not creating new avenues for resettlement or repatriation for refugees and asylum seekers, is just simply not acceptable to me, and most certainly not acceptable to the tens of millions of refugees and asylum seekers living across the world in dire circumstances, without any hope for repatriation or resettlement.”
“I think Australia so often asks the wrong questions here,” says Doherty. “We talk about, well, what does Australia need to do to stop this? What does Australia need to do to address this issue? The question we should be asking is, what are the policies Australia's able to enact that mean that more people who need protection can get it? And that's the question that keeps getting lost.”
Cover image originally posted to Flickr by DIAC images and used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license