Rights of Refugees & People Seeking Asylum
Our vision: Australia’s cruel deterrence regime is replaced with a fair and humane response to people who are forced to leave their homes, which focuses on safe passage and treats people seeking safety with dignity, compassion and respect.
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Families reunited after agonising separation
This is baby Grace (not her real name). Grace was born in an Adelaide hospital last year. Her mother, a refugee, had been held in Nauru for years and was finally brought to Australia for medical treatment when she was pregnant. But the Australian Government refused to let Grace’s father come with his wife. He was forced to remain behind in Nauru.
Grace’s mother found herself caring for her newborn baby in a foreign place without the support of her husband who was trapped almost 5000 km away on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific. Grace’s father couldn’t hold his daughter when she was born. He couldn’t watch her learn to crawl or speak her first words. He couldn’t be there to celebrate her first birthday. No family should have to endure this suffering.
Grace’s story highlights just one of the ways that the Australian Government’s refugee policy inflicts tremendous cruelty on innocent people. It is a story that was repeated for dozens of families agonisingly separated between Australia and offshore detention in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
Husbands and wives were ripped apart. Siblings were separated and several fathers had never met their own babies. Some families hadn’t seen each other for five years and were losing hope of ever seeing each other again.
In 2018, we launched our campaign to end this cruel separation and reunite families. We lodged a major complaint against Australia at the UN on behalf of 63 people separated between Australia and offshore detention in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. We brought legal action in Australia and we undertook prominent advocacy in the Australian media.
Our action worked. Every single one of the families that we represented are now together in Australia. It has been incredible to see kids hug their dads for the first time, husbands and wives reunited and families crying with joy at being together again.
But while these families are finally in Australia together, their lives remain precarious. The Morrison Government refuses to allow them to apply for a protection visa here and maintains the threat of deportation back to Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Our work continues to ensure that they can have a safe and secure future together.
Ongoing High Court action to stop deportations to Manus and Nauru
For more than four years, we have fought to prevent the deportation of children, women and men back to serious harm in offshore detention.
Hundreds of people have been evacuated from offshore detention to Australia for urgent medical care. They include women sexually assaulted in Nauru, men attacked and seriously injured on Manus and children so traumatised by years of indefinite detention that they had lost the ability to eat or speak and needed urgent psychiatric care.
We continue to lead an extraordinary partnership of pro bono partners in high pressure, high stakes legal action in the High Court of Australia. Through this work, we have prevented the deportation of more than 550 people, including more than 200 children to offshore detention.
Every deportation we prevent is a pivotal moment in the life of a person who has sought safety from Australia. Our cases have meant that kids spent their childhoods in Australian schools, parks and homes instead of languishing in a detention camp offshore.
News
Medevac repealed
Timeline: Offshore detention