Policy question: Easter 2003 protest at the Baxter Detention Centre outside Port Augusta, South Australia.
Photo: Urs Bucher
Immigration detention: a policy for failure and despair
Wednesday 4 February 2004
By Harry Minas
Australia was one of 24 countries that participated in the conference in Geneva in July 1951 which drafted and unanimously adopted the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The 1951 Convention (and the 1967 Protocol) established and codified the rights of refugees to protection, and the obligation of states to provide protection, and set out basic minimum standards for the treatment of refugees. The policy and practice of prolonged detention erodes the rights of those found to be refugees and does serious damage to our conception of Australia as a generous and open-hearted nation, writes Associate Professor Harry Minas, Director of the Centre for International Mental Health in the University of Melbourne’s School of Population Health.
Over the past 50 years Australia has developed some of the most comprehensive programs in the world to help refugees to become full participants in the social and economic life of the country in which they have settled. These programs have served our interests as well as the interests of the refugees who have settled here. They have helped to define Australia as an open and generous society, not merely tolerant but welcoming of diversity, and willing to provide assistance to those in need.
Refugee flows are one aspect of the broader issue of migration. The factors that influence international migrant flows are complex and dynamic, and are intimately tied to broad political, social and economic issues that are particularly important in poor countries.
Most people who migrate would rather not have done so if they had reasonable access to the necessities of life - safety, food, shelter, freedom and opportunity. Complex interactions between necessity, individual initiative and opportunity remain the main determinants of migration.
War, civil disorder, natural disaster, poverty and systematic infringements of human rights continue to result in large numbers of refugees and internally displaced people. In 2003 there were an estimated 20.6 million refugees and other people of concern under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). At the same time as the wealthy industrialised countries - the main proponents of the benefits of globalisation - insist on the free movement of money, information and goods, they are busy erecting ever more stringent barriers to the movement of people.
Such restrictions have provided the context for a boom in the people trafficking business. The International Organization for Migration has observed that while traditional forms of trans-border organised crime, such as drug, weapons and motor vehicle smuggling, and money laundering, continue to exist, many organisations involved in these activities have expanded their portfolio to include trafficking in people - women for the purposes of prostitution, illegal immigrants to Western Europe, the USA and Australia, and asylum seekers.
People trafficking is a major international problem. It is a trade that feeds on desperation, undoubtedly causes misery and death, and is driven by financial gain. As Australia has repeatedly argued in international fora, there is a pressing need for an effective international response.
Australia has also decided that, in relation to asylum seekers, an important element of such a response is the deterrent effect of detention. The underlying logic is that if asylum seekers who have arrived in an unauthorised manner are held in detention then others who may be considering coming in a similar manner will be dissuaded from doing so.
In 1999 a new element was added to strengthen our policy of deterrence. Until 1999 those who were found to be refugees - regardless of the manner of their arrival in Australia - were granted a permanent protection visa.
"The temporary protection visa (TPV) was introduced in October 1999 as a disincentive to unauthorised arrival ... To this end, TPVs, unlike permanent protection visas (PPVs), confer on their holders no automatic right of return if they leave Australia, no automatic right to family reunion and limited access to welfare and settlement services."
Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs. Refugee and humanitarian issues: Australia's response. Canberra, 2003
The duration of the TPV is 30 months, after which the person may re-apply for protection and, if found still to warrant Australia's protection, may be granted a further (temporary or permanent) protection visa.
Are the policies of detention of asylum seekers and granting of temporary protection visas to refugees who have come in an unauthorised manner acceptable instruments in dealing with people trafficking?
Prolonged detention of asylum seekers is known to cause psychological harm to a significant proportion of detainees. The manifestations of such harm include depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide attempts. Over time there is often a descent into hopelessness and despair.
Particularly vulnerable to such harm are people who have been severely traumatised in their own countries and most in need of our protection. Also vulnerable are children and adolescents, who suffer developmental distortions and delays, as well as psychological disorders. It is probable that this harm is long-term. It is also probable that among those who are recognised as refugees and released into the community, the harm is exacerbated by the difficulty of living in Australia on a temporary basis with a very uncertain future, and by the limitations of TPV-holders' rights, the most important of which is the impossibility of family reunion.
The harm caused by detention and the temporary protection visa regime has been further exacerbated by the systematic and sustained vilification to which asylum seekers have been subjected. They have been portrayed as queue jumpers, and therefore undeserving of our protection, and even as potential terrorists.
The use of the term border protection suggests that it is we who need protection from the refugees, rather than they who engage our protection obligations. They have been represented as people who would throw their children overboard in order to get their way - certainly not the sort of people we would want in this country.
The most disturbing element of the re-traumatisation of already vulnerable people - by systematic vilification, prolonged detention and the agony of temporary protection - is that it is knowingly done in pursuit of a policy objective. In Australia it is now legitimate to systematically mistreat one group of people in order to influence the behaviour of another. And that such mistreatment can be presented in a way that wins the approval of the majority of the population.
By accepting such a policy approach we do harm to asylum seekers and to ourselves. We are morally diminished by the policy and practice of prolonged detention of asylum seekers, and by eroding the rights of those who have been found to be refugees. We also do serious damage to our conception of ourselves as a generous and open-hearted nation.
Refugees, regardless of the manner of their arrival, should be granted the certainty of a permanent protection visa, the only basis on which they can rebuild damaged lives and reconstitute fragmented families.
The eradication of people trafficking is a legitimate goal and should be vigorously pursued by appropriate means. However, it is not acceptable to treat unauthorised arrivals who have sought asylum, most of whom have proved to be refugees, as an instrument in an anti-people-trafficking strategy. We will make no policy progress until decisions about treatment of asylum seekers and refugees are conceptually uncoupled from the policy goal of preventing people trafficking.