Australia’s first in-session week on the UN human rights council has been undermined by a scathing report that has implicated its migration policies as part of a global “escalating cycle of repression and deterrence” that has caused “massive abuse” of migrants.



Australia, which campaigned for three years for a seat on the council, has also been a global promoter of its hardline policies designed to deter irregular migration, including boat pushbacks, mandatory and indefinite detention, and offshore processing.

The 20-page report to the human rights council, from the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, said the major reason migrants were exploited and abused was the policies of states that sought to deter people from migrating and punish those who did.

“The primary cause for the massive abuse suffered by migrants in all regions of the world, including torture, rape, enslavement, trafficking and murder, is neither migration itself, nor organised crime, or the corruption of individual officials, but the growing tendency of states to base their official migration policies and practices on deterrence, criminalisation and discrimination, rather than protection, human rights and non-discrimination,” Melzer said.

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“States have initiated an escalating cycle of repression and deterrence designed to discourage new arrivals, and involving measures such as the criminalisation and detention of irregular migrants, the separation of family members, inadequate reception conditions and medical care, and the denial or excessive prolongation of status determination or habeas corpus proceedings, including expedited returns in the absence of such proceedings.

“Many states have even started to physically prevent irregular migrant arrivals, whether through border closures, fences, walls and other physical obstacles, through the externalisation of their borders and procedures, or through extra-territorial ‘pushback’ and ‘pullback’ operations, often in cooperation with other states or even non-state actors.”

Migration policies that expose migrants to foreseeable risks of torture or ill-treatment “are conclusively unlawful and give rise to state responsibility for the ensuing harm”, Melzer said.

Last year Australia agreed to pay $70m in compensation and damages to nearly 2,000 asylum seekers it illegally detained in its detention centre on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. Australia did not admit liability in the case.

To mark the start of Australia’s three-year term on the council, governor general Sir Peter Cosgrove said Australia was “deeply committed” to promoting equality for all.

“We have a duty to promote the rights of the most vulnerable, oppressed, discriminated communities, and to seek universality of human rights to all parts of our world,” he said.

The foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, defended Australia’s asylum policies and its record on assisting refugees.

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“Since the second world war, 865,000 people have come to Australia on refugee and humanitarian visas. Every year we resettle 18,750 people on refugee visas,” she said. “It is a record that Australians should be proud of and it is certainly one that I am prepared to have scrutinised by the human rights council and any other nation around the world.”

Daniel Webb from the Human Rights Law Centre, who is in Geneva observing the human rights council session, said Australia’s defence of its policies lacked credibility in the face of consistent and independent criticism.

“Our government’s deterrence regime is not only cruel, it fundamentally misses the point,” he said.

“If every country in the world just used cruelty to bludgeon away innocent human beings, then people who are forced to flee their homes would be left with nowhere safe to go. People fleeing danger deserve a chance to rebuild their lives. The focus has to be on safe passage.”

Webb said in Geneva, asylum policy was “haunting” Australia, and had profoundly damaged the country’s moral authority in the eyes of other nations and the council. He said government representatives “want to talk about anything other than the 2,000 innocent people who are still languishing on Manus and Nauru after five years”.