Sometimes a reality check is what we all need in our lives. The continued campaign to ‘Stop the Boat People’ has a tendency to sound more like an invasion on our country rather than the reality, desperate people seeking asylum from violence and possible harm or death in their own countries.
The increasing violence in the countries listed in the UNHCR report below has led to a large increase in asylum applications. While Europe in 2013 received 484,600 claims, Australia in the same period received 24,300. While other industrialised nations uphold their obligations to human rights, Australia continues to fail in this area, chasing boats carrying asylum seekers from our shores and sending asylum seekers to detention centres in a third world country.
Again we are reminded that as a Nation we are very embarrassingly ‘dropping the ball’ in relation to our obligations under international human rights conventions and more importantly to the individuals and children that these policies are set up to protect.