Nearly a year after Tony Abbott announced the additional humanitarian intake, only 2,000 have been taken in

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Australia has resettled 2,000 refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict in almost a year, in the same time as Canada and the US have taken in 30,000 and 10,000 people respectively.

Nearly a year after the former prime minister Tony Abbott announced an additional humanitarian intake of 12,000 Syrian refugees, just 2,000 have been resettled under the program.

A senior department source told the Guardian the figure was “starting to pick up but it’s still only about 2,000”. The vast majority of that figure are understood to have arrived in the past six weeks. The immigration minister and his department both refused to answer questions on the program.

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Six-hundred of those Syrians who have come to Australia under the program have been resettled in New South Wales, the NSW coordinator general for refugee resettlement, Peter Shergold, told the Guardian.

Abbott announced the Syrian resettlement scheme – in addition to Australia’s annual humanitarian intake – on 9 September 2015.

Since 4 November 2015, Canada has resettled 30,136 people fleeing the Syrian conflict. The Canadian government has a website, tagged #Welcome Refugees, which updates details of the progress of the resettlement program.

Barack Obama announced that the US would this week receive its 10,000th Syrian refugee since October 2015, ahead of the government’s planned resettlement schedule.

“On behalf of the president and his administration, I extend the warmest of welcomes to each and every one of our Syrian arrivals, as well as the many other refugees resettled this year from all over the world,” the US national security adviser, Susan Rice, said. The US will resettle about 85,000 refugees this year.



Australia has been criticised for moving too slowly to resettle refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria and Iraq.

Announcing Australia’s 12,000 additional humanitarian places last September, Abbott said: “Our focus will be on those most in need – the women, children and families of persecuted minorities who have sought refuge from the conflict in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.”

However, he imposed no timeframe for their resettlement.

“We’re not putting a timetable on it because we do have to make all of these important checks – health, security, character – because it is important that we bring in people who are going to be contributors to the Australian community,” he said. “It is important that we don’t bring in anyone from this troubled region who might ultimately be a problem for the Australian community.”

Oxfam has urged Australia to move more swiftly on its resettlement efforts of refugees who have escaped Syria’s now five-year-old civil war.

“The government has an obligation to provide details on meeting its commitment to resettle an additional 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Australia,” Oxfam Australia’s chief executive, Helen Szoke, said. “So far, there has been a lack of transparency as to how many of these refugees have arrived in Australia or any firm commitment as to when the promise – made nearly a year ago – will be met in full.”

The acting chief executive of the Refugee Council of Australia, Tim O’Connor, told the Guardian his organisation welcomed the recent increase in the speed of arrival of Syrians and Iraqis as part of the September 2015 commitment of 12,000 additional refugee resettlement places.

“Australia’s settlement organisations have long been prepared for the scale-up of this refugee intake and are now very busy in bringing their expertise to resettle these people into the Australian community. The expectation is that the majority of the 12,000 will arrive within the next 18 months.”



Australia’s humanitarian refugee intake was 13,750 last year and will remain at that level for the 2016-17 financial year. It is slated to increase to 18,750 by 2018-19.



Labor has a policy of lifting Australia’s humanitarian intake to 27,000, while the Greens have proposed 50,000.

On September 19, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, will host a summit in New York “addressing large movements of refugees and migrants”. But a draft declaration document from the summit has already been widely circulated and widely condemned for its failure to commit countries to concrete actions to make refugees’ journeys better or safer. The declaration is also not legally enforceable.

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The day after Ban’s summit, the US president is hosting his own “leaders’ summit”, also in NY.

But, unlike the UN event, the US summit has been billed as a “pay-to-play” summit, with Obama offering invitations only to countries who indicate in advance that they are prepared to make concrete commitments to accept more refugees from the growing global pool of displaced people.

The Guardian understands Australia has been invited but has not yet formally accepted as the government considers what, if any, commitments it is prepared to make. Australia would likely be represented by the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, the foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, and the immigration minister, Peter Dutton.

The UNHCR says more than 65m people are currently forcibly displaced from their homes, 24.5m of those outside their own country.