In Australia, many refugees are being deprived of their basic human rights. Australia has many international obligations to protect the asylum seekers that arrive to the country. Along with these international obligations, Australia also has national legislation to which it must abide to. It has been found that although Australia is legally binding to the laws of the United Nations, refugees are still being denied the protection they are entitled to.
An asylum seeker is a person that has left their country in order to protect themselves from persecution, and has applied for refugee protection. In order for an asylum seeker to be successfully approved as a refugee (as amended by the 1967 Protocol of the United Nations Convention relating to
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This is proof that Australia is breaching the Protocol that is set in place for them, as these people, who are classed as an asylum seeker under international law, are jumping into oceans in an attempt to save their lives. By the end of 2016, it was found that over 65 million people were identified as refugees or asylum seekers, with over half of these people coming from Syria, Afghanistan or Somalia (Domonoske, 2016). 86% of these refugees were hosted in developing countries, with Lebanon hosting 183 refugees for every 1000 inhabitants (the highest ratio in the world), and Turkey hosting the highest total amount – 2.5 million (UNHCR, 2016). In 2016, 2.5 million refugees were recognised or resettled, and of those, only 1.43% were assisted by Australia (Refugee Council of Australia, 2017). As of 2016, the gross domestic product in Australia was over 1.2 trillion USD, whilst Turkey’s was around 857 billion USD (The World Bank Group, 2018). That year, although Australia has the funds to do so, the Government only allowed