Rathy Barthlote was only 28 when she was forced to flee her homeland.
With her husband and two-year-old daughter, she escaped Sri Lanka's Tamil genocide and arrived by boat to Australia in 2013.
Over a decade later, they are still waiting for the safety and security of permanent residency.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that gender and nationality alone are “sufficient” for a country to grant asylum to Afghan women.
The ECJ ruled on Friday that discriminatory measures adopted by the Taliban towards women “constitute acts of persecution” justifying the recognition of refugee status.
The United Nations human rights chief has called for the Taliban to repeal the “egregious” laws, which he said were an attempt to turn women into “faceless, voiceless shadows”.
Gender, nationality ‘sufficient’ to grant Afghan women asylum: Top EU court. Aljazeera
Matt Thistlethwaite, the federal assistant minister for immigration, spoke to the Sydney Institute a few weeks ago. He explained how the Albanese Labor government was planning to fix Australia's broken migration system.
And he said something damning."For many decades Australia hasn't had a migration plan. We haven't had a migration strategy," he said.
A review in to Australia's migration system finds that temporary migrant workers are frequently "exploited" with the current system contributing to the risk of that. "As a result, Australia's migration policies have lacked direction and purpose. "Migration's been unresponsive to Australia's needs. It has provided marginal economic benefit and hasn't enhanced labour productivity.
A new policy brief, authored by Kaldor Centre Director Daniel Ghezelbash and Constantin Hruschka of the Protestant University of Applied Sciences in Freiburg, provides evidence of a better way.
The deteriorating situation in Lebanon has drawn a particular focus in Australia with the widening conflict in the Middle East.
The government has urged an estimated 15,000 Australian citizens currently in Lebanon to leave.
But why does Australia have such a large diaspora from a relatively small country on the other side of the world, and a particular interest in what happens there?
The history of the Lebanese community in Australia can be traced back over 130 years and has evolved with waves of migration over time.
The story behind Australia's large Lebanese community. By Sean Tarek Goodwin, ABC News
A former Iranian refugee, who sought asylum in Australia but instead ended up at Nauru's offshore detention centre, wants former Nauru president and the current Pacific Islands Forum secretary general, Baron Waqa, to admit responsibility for the "cruel and inhumane" treatment of refugees.
Tuvalu is on the front lines of the climate crisis, with regular flooding already destroying vital crops and infrastructure.
Pacific sea levels are rising faster than the global average, putting Tuvalu at even greater risk, according to a recent report from the World Meteorological Organization.
In response to this existential threat, last month Australia and Tuvalu signed the Falepili Union, offering up to 280 Tuvaluans — 2.5 per cent of the population — permanent residency in Australia each year.
While the treaty has been embraced by those seeking education and work opportunities, it raises an urgent question: What happens to those who stay as the land and population shrink?
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has issued the first humanitarian visas to Palestinian families arriving in Australia after almost a year of pressure on the issue.
A boatload of migrants allegedly turned back by the Australian Border Force without maps, navigational equipment or reasonable training ran aground on rocks on Rote Island, Indonesia. Another group beached a few kilometres away and had to be rescued by locals responding to pleas for help.
One man said they were so scared after being cut loose in the vast Timor Sea with only a 15-minute Border Force course in navigating, that they didn’t dare to touch anything but the steering wheel………..
Hamzah Hamitu, a fisherman from Kupang and veteran of these waters, was incredulous when he heard there was no crew on the boats to guide the migrants to Rote Island safely.
“They [the Australians] shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “The Timor Sea is a dangerous place. We have strong currents – they could have easily died.”
Abul Rizvi, former deputy secretary at the immigration department, described Dutton's comments as "nonsense".
"The boat arrival comparison is nonsense; boat arrivals come without a visa, all of these students came with a visa," Rizvi said.
"If he (Dutton) doesn't understand the difference between that, he shouldn't have been home affairs minister."
Behrouz Boochani, Kurdish refugee, author and activist, will be the keynote speaker at the Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) national conference in Kyneton, Victoria, from October 11–13.
Boochani’s address on collective resistance and activism will set the framework for discussions.
Moz (Mostafa) Azimitabar will present his and Farhad Bandesh’s film, Freedom is Beautiful, on the evening of October 12.
Australia has a serious skills shortage yet many qualified refugees still struggle to find appropriate jobs. A new project aims to change that, by offering positions to those facing barriers, such as limited local experience.
Refugees could be the simple answer to Australia's skills shortage. By Edwina Guinan, SBS News
Sukhdeep Kaur with her husband Jaswinder Singh and daughter, Ravneet Garcha. Kaur cannot return to India to visit her mother, who is undergoing cancer treatment, without becoming unable to return.
“She is 75 years old, she is calling me every day to see her,” Kaur tells Guardian Australia. “She’s asking, ‘I want to see you while I am alive.’’ But, Kaur says, “I can’t leave to see her.” If she does, she won’t be able to return to Australia for three years.
That’s because Kaur is on a bridging visa. Kaur and her family have lived in Sunbury, in Melbourne’s north, since 2015.
She has been in limbo since then, unable to visit her mother, whom she hasn’t seen in seven years. Experts say her experience is shared by many migrants on bridging visas waiting for ministerial intervention applications to be considered.
Over the past three decades, Australia had issued at least 25 different visa types to assist people forced from their homes by humanitarian emergency, according to a policy paper from the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law.
“When crises threaten lives, the Australian government often steps up – but not always in a predictable, efficient, equitable and effective way, if responses to Afghanistan, Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza are anything to go by,” the policy brief reads.
“For some people escaping these conflicts, travel to Australia has been relatively easy; for others, impossible,” the brief, written by Prof Jane McAdam and Dr Regina Jefferies, says.
From 2019-24 Home Affairs recorded a total of 2,670 incidents of self-harm or threatened self-harm, an average of 1.54 reported incidents every day.
To house a detainee in detention it cost the Australian government $428,542 per person, per year, over the 2020-21 financial year, compared to $54,798 in community detention.
Labor has been accused of attempting to sneak through changes limiting the ability to seek merits review from immigration detention, overturning the effect of a recent high court decision.
Yet when it came to voting yesterday on a UN Resolution advanced by Palestine to give effect to the International Court of Justice decision of 19 July, Australia abstained from voting for it, along with the UK, Canada and Germany. But our neighbour New Zealand voted for it, as did Ireland, Japan and France.
The Resolution states that Israel must put “an end to its unlawful policies and practices, including… repealing all legislation and measures creating or maintaining the unlawful situation, including those which discriminate against the Palestinian people”; “Allowing all Palestinians displaced during the occupation to return to their original place of residence”; and “Making reparation for the damage caused to all the natural and legal persons concerned in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. ”
The list of people in limbo is growing by about 1000 a month, creating a backdoor for people on temporary visas who run out of options, including students, to keep working in Australia by applying for asylum and entering the drawn-out appeal process.
It means those found to be genuine refugees are also forced to wait years for security.
Asylum claims at six-year high as record numbers await decision. By Natassia Chrysanthos, SMH
Hazara photographer Barat Ali Batoor gives a distinctive perspective on the lives of refugees and the realities that face his people.
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