Nauru touts for ‘more business’ at UN summit

PACIFIC – Pacific island countries have called for help in dealing with refugees at a major UN gathering in New York.

They gave delegates to the Summit for Refugees and Migrants a glimpse of their own experiences and said countries need to co-operate more.

Nauru’s Justice Minister David Adeang called for help to resettle the hundreds of refugees living in limbo on the island.

He described Nauru’s offshore regional processing system with Australia as an innovative model which had avoided thousands of deaths at sea.

The camps on Nauru and in Papua New Guinea have been widely criticised but Adeang said Nauru was proud of the system which had been effective apart from a crucial missing element.

“Nauru invites other countries to assist in finding durable resettlement solutions for our refugees.

“This is the critical missing component. Remote processing is one part of what needs to be a comprehensive migration strategy,” he said.

“I encourage states today to assist us find permanent homes for the 924 refugee men, women and children currently on Nauru.”

Adeang even appeared to put out a bid for more processing business – saying Nauru had the infrastructure and systems in place and was well-placed to address migration flows.

Papua New Guinea’s Foreign Minister Rimbink Pato took a forthright stand, suggesting countries be held accountable for the mass exodus of people fleeing strife.

He said PNG’s experience of the global refugee crisis included seeing Carteret Islanders forced to migrate internally because of rising seas and an asylum seeker processing centre on Manus Island.

He said the refugee detention and processing complex on Manus Island was set up with Australia as a gesture of goodwill and is now being closed after being found unconstitutional, showing asylum seeker processing and refugee resettlement was not a simple issue.

“Papua New Guinea’s experience from hosting and providing migrants and refugee needs a call for a shared global responsibility,” said Pato. “This is why my country is serious and committed to be part of the global solution.”

Pato recounted the low numbers wanting to resettle in PNG from the centre and he recommended innovative methods like his country’s waiver of a US$3000 fee for citizenship for refugees.

Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said the world needed to approach the “grave crisis” in a way that put human rights and dignity above all else.

He said countries must make a more concerted effort to work together to deal with it.

“We hear the cries of those that are unfairly treated in detention centres including in our own region with no hope and no way out,” Bainimarama said.

“Our common humanity demands that we must heed these cries and work together more wholistically and more effectively to address this crisis.”

Bainimarama said Fiji had offered refuge to climate change migrants from Kiribati and Tuvalu but he said that would need international help.

Meanwhile Australia defended its border protection policies, saying it is a world leader in investing in refugees.

“Australia’s immigration policies have focussed on finding a balance between population growth, nation building and economic needs while sharing the responsibility for resettling the most vulnerable refugees,” said Immigration Minister Peter Dutton.

“The Australian story demonstrates how societies can benefit from safe, orderly and well-managed migration.”

Dutton said Australia had had a long history of managed migration and he reiterated that people smugglers did not offer a path to the country.

Human Rights Watch has questioned the Australian government’s suggestion that it has limited control over the running of the offshore processing centre on Nauru.

This comes as Canberra rejected a report by the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International which found that it is ignoring appalling human rights abuses against asylum seekers and refugees held in detention on Nauru.

In a statement, Australia’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection said it strongly refuted many of the report’s allegations, and that it does not exert control over Nauru’s laws.

Human Rights Watch Australia director Elaine Pearson said Canberra could be doing much more to improve the parlous situation for people held in the Nauru centre.

“I think it’s very disingenuous of Australia to simply push all of these issues on to the Nauru government and say these are a matter for the Nauru government to resolve when Australia has pumped more than a billion dollars into that country in order to get this system of offshore detention up and running.”

- RNZI