Photo credit: Aljazeera
Australia violated the rights of asylum seekers arbitrarily detained on the island of Nauru; a UN watchdog ruled on Thursday.
France 24 reports that the UN Human Rights Committee published decisions in two cases involving 25 refugees and asylum seekers who endured years of arbitrary detention in the island nation.
The panel of 18 independent experts found that in both cases Australia violated the rights of migrants, including minors who received insufficient water and healthcare.
Mahjoub El-Halba a committee member, said, “A state party cannot escape its human rights responsibility when outsourcing asylum processing to another state.”
The UN body called on Australia to provide adequate compensation to the migrants and to take steps to ensure similar violations do not recur.
However, the committee does not have the power to compel states to follow its rulings, but its decisions carry reputational weight.
On its part, the Australian government said it was considering the committee’s views and would give a response “in due course”.
Under a hardline policy introduced in 2012, Australia sent thousands of migrants attempting to reach the country in a boat to “offshore processing” centres. They were held in two detention centres – one in Nauru and the other on Papua New Guinea’s Manua Island.
The UN committee rejected Australia’s argument that rights abuses that occurred in Nauru did not fall within its jurisdiction. the committee pointed out that Australia had arranged for the establishment of Nauru’s regional processing centre and contributed to its operation and management.
