Australia has finally taken up New Zealand’s offer to resettle 450 refugees over the next three years, but it’s taken nine years to get to this point and significant damage has been done during this time. In this year’s federal budget, the government also announced $666 million being dedicated over four years for an additional 16,500 humanitarian places for Afghan nationals, which is a very welcome announcement, but we cannot settle for tick-box exercises.
Australia’s resettlement program is world-class, however, its treatment of people seeking asylum is the opposite. We need to see these recent announcements as positive but small and overdue first steps towards better immigration, refugee and humanitarian programs.
We need fairer processes for claiming asylum, reform of the immigration detention system, and a greater emergency response contingency, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Ukraine.
Ahead of the election, Mums 4 Refugees is calling on the federal government to address the following:
The permanent end to offshore processing
A fair process for claiming asylum
Reform of the immigration detention system
A larger and more responsive refugee and humanitarian program
It’s time we stopped spending billions of dollars on keeping refugees and asylum seekers in detention and started respecting their human rights.
Dulce Munoz Founder of Mums 4 Refugees, has been advocating for refugee rights for years and is now a highly active community of over 7,000 members. Through demonstrations, speaking out via their 50K+ social following, and support of refugees in Australia, Dulce works tirelessly to advocate for more humane, effective, and fair immigration and refugee policies.