UNHCR Statement: Australia must prevent looming humanitarian emergency in Papua New Guinea | WPN World People News

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, urges Australia to take responsibility and address the imminent humanitarian crisis for refugees and asylum-seekers in Papua New Guinea. UNHCR is profoundly troubled by the mounting risks of “offshore processing” arrangements, and their extraordinary human toll, as Australia seeks to abruptly decrease its support by the end of October.

An asylum-seeker enters the ‘Regional Processing Centre’ on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. Refugee centres here have prompted international concern over the harsh conditions and poor levels of protection for those who arrive by boat in Australia and are transferred to the neigbouring island.

UNHCR has consistently stressed the need for ongoing essential services for refugees and asylum-seekers to the Governments of Australia and Papua New Guinea. Despite this, appropriate steps to avoid further tragedy and harm to vulnerable people have not been taken.

UNHCR’s most recent comprehensive missions to Papua New Guinea in May and September 2017 have amplified longstanding concerns for the health and well-being of refugees and asylum-seekers there. Local emergency medical services are overstretched and unable to meet the additional needs of the transferred population. The discontinuation of torture and trauma services is also particularly worrying in a context where people seeking protection have suffered the negative effects of prolonged and open-ended detention.

A lack of proper planning for the closure of existing facilities, insufficient consultation with the Manusian community, and the absence of long-term solutions for those not included in the relocation arrangement to the United States of America, has increased an already critical risk of instability and harm.

“Having created the present crisis, to now abandon the same acutely vulnerable human beings would be unconscionable,” said Thomas Albrecht, UNHCR’s Regional Representative in Canberra. “Legally and morally, Australia cannot walk away from all those it has forcibly transferred to Papua New Guinea and Nauru.”

UNHCR renews its call for Australia to meet its obligations to those who have sought its protection and particularly to provide ongoing, adequate care and long-term solutions. UNHCR encourages not only the Government of Australia, but all Australian parliamentarians and leaders to prevent this looming humanitarian emergency.

Source: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees