Peter Dutton agreed to allow the United Nations to put cases for especially vulnerable refugees held in offshore detention camps to be resettled in Australia, but then reneged on the understanding, a senior UN official has said.
Volker Türk, the assistant high commissioner for protection within the UN’s refugee agency, told the ABC’s 7.30 program the immigration minister agreed in a meeting last year that the UNHCR could present “compelling humanitarian cases with strong family links in Australia” for resettlement in Australia without fanfare or public acknowledgement of any exception to government policy.
The UNHCR has identified 36 people – of the 2,000 people held offshore – it wanted to present for resettlement in Australia. Those refugees have spouses, children or parents living in Australia.
Türk met Dutton in November last year, as the UNHCR considered what role, if any, it would play in Australia’s deal to resettle refugees held on its offshore islands in the US.
At that meeting, Türk said: “There was no doubt in our mind – and this is what we put forward to the minister at the time – that we would present to him cases that are compelling humanitarian cases with close family links to Australia.
“We were hoping that, indeed, Australia would consider them favourably within the discretion that the minister has at his disposal.”
Türk said there was no agreement to the resettlement of specific refugees, “because we hadn’t presented cases yet”.
“But he [Dutton] did agree that we would be able to present such cases and, in subsequent meetings with the department, it was very important for us to ensure precisely that the verification of close family links was ascertained by our officers so that we could present such cases.
“Of course, we went into this agreement on the understanding that Australia would be part of the solution for a handful of compelling humanitarian cases with strong family links in Australia.”
On Monday the UN’s most senior refugee agency official, the high commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi, issued an extraordinary statement, saying Australia had failed to honour a “clear agreement” with the UN on family reunification.
Grandi said offshore processing caused “extensive, avoidable suffering”, deliberately split families and was contrary to “common decency”.
“There is a fundamental contradiction in saving people at sea, only to mistreat and neglect them on land,” he said.
The suggestion of an agreement for Australian resettlement runs contrary to all the government’s public pronouncements on the refugees it has sent to its offshore detention centres. Publicly the government has unflinchingly maintained, over years, that no one sent to Manus or Nauru would ever be resettled in Australia.
But the UNHCR took notice of the vociferous public debate around asylum in Australia and was seeking to give the government the opportunity to quietly resettle those compelling cases in Australia without public fanfare or acknowledgement.
In response to questions on Grandi’s statement, a spokeswoman for Dutton directed the Guardian to a Sunday television interview where the minister was asked whether there was any contingency under which the government might allow any refugees held offshore to come to Australia.
“No. People will not be coming to Australia,” Dutton said.
But the government is facing renewed and concerted pressure to end offshore processing for a second time.
Amnesty International’s refugee coordinator, Dr Graham Thom, said the issue of split families had been of preeminent concern since the announcement of the US deal in September.
Thom said the UNHCR’s allegation that the Australian government was choosing to deliberately separate family members permanently was yet another measure designed to punish people.
“This latest decision by the Australian government speaks volumes on the extreme measures of cruelty it is willing to mete out on people who came here seeking protection and safety.”
The Refugee Council of Australia said the government had no plan to meet its legal obligations for resettling refugees, beyond foisting its responsibilities on to other countries.
“It is paying PNG and Nauru to detain people on its behalf and forcing asylum seekers back to Indonesia or to punishment in countries of origin, while quietly begging other countries to resettle the many people found to be refugees,” the council chief executive, Paul Power, said.
The Human Rights Law Centre’s Daniel Webb said it appeared the government had deliberately misled the UN, and accused the government of abandoning basic decency.
“Permanently ripping apart families is fundamentally wrong. Children deserve to be with their parents. Families forced to flee persecution deserve to build a future in safety together.”
The US resettlement deal – touted by both the government and opposition as the resolution of Australia’s offshore regime – remains uncertain. No one has been resettled under the plan and US officials recently left the offshore islands once the country hit its cap for accepting refugees for this year. The quota resets in October.
