Number of displaced people worldwide exceeds 50 million: UN report
".. the content, of course, has relevance to refugee questions/ policies everywhere .. aside: i have mentioned before my personal position on the political debate in Australia re refugees is basically .. firstly, that the importance of the discussion within the political climate in Australia, in light of the very small numbers we are talking about compared to the United States and other countries, is that the importance of it here does not exactly place Australia as particularly generous nation on the refugee question .. secondly, no, i don't have a solution, just know which side of the debate i am most comfortable with .. "
The number of refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced people worldwide has exceeded 50 million for the first time since World War II, a United Nations report shows.
Against the backdrop of these figures, Australia's efforts to help alleviate the crisis have stagnated or worsened, with the country sliding backwards in the global rankings according to some measures.
Last year there were 51.2 million people displaced, six million more than in 2012.
Worsening conflicts in Syria, Central African Republic, and South Sudan contributed to major new displacements, the report said. Photo: AP/Gregorio Borgia
Worsening conflicts in Syria, Central African Republic, and South Sudan contributed to major new displacements, the report said.
The staggering figure reflects a continued and increasing demand for international protection throughout the year, the Global Trends report said.
Australia's refugee resettlement program was ranked second in the world in 2013, behind only the US and marginally ahead of Canada. These three countries hosted 90 per cent of resettled refugees in 2013.
However resettled refugees – those admitted through a UNHCR-co-ordinated program – account for less than four per cent of recognised refugees.
When ranked in terms of all refugees resettled and recognised last year, Australia's ranking drops to 17th, compared with a ranking of 10th in 2010, according to figures from the Refugee Council of Australia.
The result worsens when Australia's contribution is ranked by the number of refugees living here. Fewer than 0.3 per cent of the 11.7 million refugees under the UNHCR's mandate live in Australia, placing Australia 48th out of 187 countries. Our ranking slides even further when measured against the size of the population (62nd) and the country's wealth (74th).
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told an audience at the UNHCR-NGO consultations in Geneva this week that he was ''very concerned'' about Australia's offshore processing centres for asylum seekers and Australia should take the ultimate responsibility for people who arrive on its shores.
''Australia is a very strange situation,'' Mr Guterres said.
''It has the most successful resettlement program I can imagine and the community integration is excellent.
''The problem is when we discuss boats and there, of course, we enter into a very, very, very dramatic thing. I think it is a kind of collective sociological and psychological question.''
Australia received 16,000 applications for asylum (including 4200 applications to for decision review) in 2013, just under 0.5 per cent of the 3.6 million applications lodged worldwide and a sharp decrease from the 1.04 per cent share of applications received in 2010.
This placed Australia 30th for the number of asylum applications received in 2013 and 66th when applications were measured against the size of each country’s population, according to figures from the Refugee Council of Australia.
Commemorating International Refugee Day on Friday, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said that Australia was meeting its international refugee obligations and doing its share of ''heavy lifting''.
He told reporters in Perth that 4000 places in Australia's humanitarian intake had been opened due to the government stopping the boats.
Elaine Pearson, the Australian director of Human Rights Watch, said it was no surprise that more and more people were making their way to Australia.
''This report shows that the entire world is facing a crisis of forced migration at a level never seen before due to persecution, conflict and human rights abuses,'' she said.
''While it's true Australia is comparatively generous when compared to other nations, at the same time, it doesn't have the same number of undocumented people that simply get absorbed into the population as happens in Europe, US and elsewhere," she said.
"Australia should be doing more to take its fair share."
Australia trafficks and abuses asylum seeker children
Date February 25, 2014
Linda Briskman and Chris Goddard
In transporting imprisoned children over national borders, Canberra is not only involved in trafficking but also exposing them to more abuse.
Illustration: Andrew Dyson
In the heated debates about asylum seekers, including the tragic death of Reza Berati on Manus Island, there is one group that is always forgotten: children. Ten years ago we lamented the fact that there were about 100 children held in Australia's immigration detention prisons, arguing that those children were subject to ''organised'' and ''ritualised'' abuse by the Australian government.
We used the term ''ritualised abuse'' to explain that the children were subject to formal and repeated acts of abuse, carried out under a belief system that the government adopted to justify such cruelty. We used the term ''organised abuse'' to illustrate that children were being abused by many perpetrators who acted together in ways they knew could be extremely harmful.
Ten years later, there are 10 times as many children subject to this organised, ritualised practice on the Australian mainland, Christmas Island and Nauru. Children without parents, dismissively referred to as ''unaccompanied minors'', are now joining transported families with children on Nauru.
As the abuse has markedly increased, we have further refined our definition to incorporate ''commercialised trafficking'' in children. Australia is now trafficking more children across national borders, defying UN protocols of trafficking in persons. As the tragic events on Manus Island unfolded, there was barely a murmur about what was occurring in the second offshore imprisonment site of Nauru, with 10 unaccompanied children forcibly sent there from Christmas Island; more have now followed. Through deliberately misleading and confusing terminology, these trafficked children are described in various ways; ''transferees'' and ''illegals'' are being sent to ''secure'' detention sites, rather than to imprisonment.
According to a definition found through the UNICEF website, based on engagements with international agencies, ''A child has been trafficked if he or she has been moved within a country, or across borders, whether by force or not, with the purpose of exploiting the child''. Among the factors that render a trafficked child vulnerable, according to this definition, are that they ''cannot speak the language, are disadvantaged by their legal status, suffer a lack of access to basic services (such as education and healthcare), or do not know the environment''. All these apply to children we have trafficked to Nauru.
There is more. All those who contribute to this movement of children, and know what they do is likely to lead to child exploitation, are themselves traffickers. They include ''recruiters, intermediaries, document providers, transporters, corrupt officials, employers and exploiters''.
''Duty of care'' and ''risk management'' are terms familiar to Australians. Sending children to Nauru is a serious abrogation of duty of care and poses untold risks to unaccompanied children. Riots and fires on Nauru last year, and recent events on Manus Island, starkly reveal the impact of locking up innocent people and taking away all hopes and rights. For children to witness such events, sometimes without the protection of a parent, increases the well-documented harm that results from being locked up for indeterminate periods.
Imprisoned children's voices are haunting. In Human Rights Overboard we recounted narratives about so many childhoods lost. One boy who was 11 when detained on Nauru told us: ''I felt my childhood was being washed away by detention. It's like watching an R-rated movie you are not supposed to watch. It included sexual content, very coarse language, violence, suicide and every horrible experience that you can imagine. Children experienced the grown up world when they are not ready for it.''
Last December a well-known non-government organisation advertised for an ''Unaccompanied Minor Manager'' on Nauru, specifying that a key objective would be to ''reduce the risk of abuse, neglect, exploitation or harm to unaccompanied minors''. A noble statement, but given the remote location, the tensions and children's past experiences, such a goal is not achievable.
In 1992, in his renowned Redfern speech, Paul Keating referred to indigenous stolen children and spoke of our failure to imagine such things happening to us. Ironically, it was Keating's government that introduced mandatory detention of asylum seekers. Our national cruelty continues as we fail to imagine what it would be like if our own children were harshly imprisoned without cause, without limit and without hope.
In effect, the government is moving children for profit, exactly what they accuse people smugglers of doing. The profit is not only financial for the range of stakeholders, but unashamedly political. Those colluding with exploitation of children for political and financial gain include government departments, ground and air transport personnel, private security companies and ''humanitarian'' organisations. In this tangled web, ritualised abuse of children is shrouded by the shrill, simplistic message of Stop the Boats, unconscionably punishing these children to deter others.
In 2004, the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention found children held in these facilities ''had suffered numerous and repeated breaches of their human rights''. The inquiry found that our detention policies ''failed to protect the mental health of children, failed to provide adequate healthcare and education and failed to protect unaccompanied children and those with disabilities''.
Such are the continuing concerns that the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, announced on February 3 that she is leading another inquiry, 10 years later.
During the past 10 years, there were occasions when we foolishly hoped that children would be freed. Not only were these hopes dashed, but imprisoning asylum seeker children increased in scale, intensity and cruelty. This cruel punishment has become less unusual.
We live in a vast and wealthy nation ''with boundless plains to share''. We can afford to be fair. Unless we reverse this blight on our nation, children's anguish will continue to shame us.
How many more childhoods will be washed away while children remain imprisoned?
Linda Briskman is professor of human rights at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology. Chris Goddard is adjunct professor, Child Abuse Prevention Research Australia, at Monash University. Their book, with Susie Latham, Human Rights Overboard: Seeking asylum in Australia, won the Australian Human Rights Commission award for non-fiction in 2008.
.. sadly, evidence is that Australia keeps refugee children in detention, in breach of international laws, longer then ALL other Western industrialized nations ..
Mr Subianto had thrown the final declaration into confusion with an attempt to withdraw from the process at the 11th hour.
Some supporters had even suggested he was no longer an actual candidate.
But the commission's declaration indicates his status was unchanged.
Ahead of the announcement, Indonesian Democratic Party chairwoman Megawati Sukarnoputri claimed victory for Mr Widodo at a news conference in Jakarta.
"I want to declare that we, the party that supports and puts forward Joko Widodo and Jusuf Kalla (for vice president), has won," she said.
Last minute confusion
Earlier in the day as Indonesia's announcement drew closer, Mr Subianto called the election process undemocratic.
Mr Subianto - who had also claimed victory in the July 9 election - alleged "massive fraud" and said he was withdrawing from the race to lead the world's third-biggest democracy.
"There has been a massive, structured and systematic fraud in the 2014 elections," Mr Subianto said.
"The presidential election, organised by the (election commission), is not democratic," he said, adding the commission was "not fair or transparent".
Mr Subianto, 62, had been widely expected to challenge the result in the Constitutional Court if he lost.
But his lawyer says that will not happen.
It is not clear if he will appeal to a lower court.
Mr Widodo's victory caps a meteoric rise for the former furniture exporter who was born in a riverbank slum.
It is likely to be welcomed by investors who hope he can breathe new life into the economy after a recent slowdown.
Tensions have been high since election day as both sides in the contest accused each other of seeking to tamper with the votes during the lengthy counting process.
There are fears the tension could spark unrest in a country that was hit by repeated outbreaks of violence before former president Suharto's downfall in 1998.
More than 250,000 police were deployed across the country on Tuesday.
Security was particularly tight in the capital Jakarta, with hundreds of police in riot gear stationed around the election commission headquarters, and roads around the centre of the capital closed off to traffic.
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