“Myopic” policies of deterrence, and slogans like “stop the boats” are ineffective in addressing the movement of asylum seekers across the world, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi has said, in a major speech urging greater cooperation between nations.
Speaking at the University of Melbourne’s Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, Grandi said: “Far too often, rich countries have a myopic approach to global forced displacement and population movements, focusing overwhelmingly on border controls.”
Grandi said governments rarely responded strategically to the arrival of significant numbers of people forced to move.
“They are seen as either someone else’s problem, or something unmanageable to deal with when it reaches domestic borders or shores. The reality is that simple slogans like ‘stop the boats’ are no more effective a solution to this challenge than those that say ‘let them all in’.”
In an interview with the Guardian, Grandi praised the Australian government for its efforts to “reset the way Australia deals with refugees”, but said he was troubled by Australia’s offshore detention policy for boat-borne asylum seekers being mimicked by other countries such as the UK.
In the first visit to Australia in more than a decade by a UN high commissioner for refugees, Grandi met with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, foreign minister, Penny Wong, and immigration minister, Andrew Giles.
“I was greatly encouraged by my interaction with the government here: the tone, the space, the understanding, the openness to criticism is refreshing. I am grateful for that … I think we will make progress.”
Grandi said that Australia’s reintroduction of offshore processing in 2013 – an extant policy which has been consistently criticised by the UNHCR – “made the discussion with Australia more complex”.
But he said the Albanese government had begun making significant decisions towards more humane asylum policies, in particular granting permanent protection to about 19,000 refugees who had previously only been permitted temporary visas.
“More needs to be done, including solutions for the outstanding small groups of people on Nauru and Manus Island, and solutions for those that were transferred to Australia.
“But when I met with the prime minister, and met with ministers, I found engaged, positively interested, humanitarian interlocutors.”
Grandi said he was “very upset” to see Australia’s offshoring policy being cited as exemplar by the UK in its proposed plan to forcibly remove asylum seekers who arrive by boat to detention centres in Rwanda.
The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, even copied the slogan of the former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, standing behind a podium proclaiming to “stop the boats”.
“Of course, we’re troubled, more than troubled, we’re very upset by that [policy adoption],” Grandi told the Guardian. “But we’re not surprised. In the early years of the Australia policy, we said ‘this policy is not only bad in itself, it has the power of replication’. And that is what has started to happen.”
Grandi said that wealthy, powerful countries which make it impossible for people to reach their territory to claim asylum – a practice of “asylum denial” – set a dangerous precedent.
“What if, in 2017, when 1 million Rohingya were pushed into Bangladesh from Myanmar fleeing extreme violence, Bangladesh has said the same, had pushed people away from its borders?
“No country should close its borders to asylum seekers.”
There are currently about 88 people held by Australia in the community in PNG, and about 40 in Nauru: the offshore detention and processing of all asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat remains government policy.
Australia was forced to shut its Manus Island detention centre after PNG’s supreme court ruled it was an illegal detention. The detention centre on Nauru – Australia’s “enduring form” of offshore processing – is currently in abeyance, on standby for future arrivals.
Grandi also said he would like to see Australia increase its refugee resettlement intake, as an important, if minor, solution for refugees around the world, particularly those facing acute vulnerabilities. The Labor government has a policy platform of nearly doubling Australia’s annual humanitarian intake from 13,750 to 27,000 in a “progressive increase”.
Grandi’s visit to Australia is the first by a UN high commissioner for refugees in 11 years. When his predecessor, António Guterres (now the UN secretary general) visited, there were 45 million displaced people across the world. That figure is now 103 million.
Grandi said driving the massive increase in displacement was the reality “that the world has become very clumsy, if not incapable, of making peace”, citing the descent of Sudan into civil war with little effective international intervention.
“We live in times where international cooperation has never been needed more, on everything from climate change to the pandemic, from global security to inequalities, to refugees and migrants. All of this can only be addressed through states working together.
“Unfortunately, we live in a time – perhaps since the 1930s – when the rhetoric of ‘my country first’ has never been more dominant. A rhetoric that has been a complete failure.”
In his speech at the University of Melbourne, Grandi said “complex population movements” – of refugees and other people compelled to move for other reasons – could only be resolved through an “‘all-of-route’ approach”.
This would involve “global cooperation to prevent and resolve conflicts”, as well as improving human rights and physical conditions – water, housing, healthcare – in countries of origin. Destination countries should seek to expand formal refugee resettlement programs, as well as build alternative pathways for migration, and cooperate internationally to help those forced to move avoid dangerous journeys and the control of traffickers.
“The approach also requires – for lack of a better word – a ‘panoramic’ view of population movements, moving away from the almost obsessive focus on just controlling arrivals at borders, to looking at their geographical complexity – literally at all steps of the long migratory routes.”
