Australia must stop separating refugee families, says UN
By splitting up a Sri Lankan family, UNHCR said Australia had gone ‘beyond a refusal to reunite families to instead actively and indefinitely separate them’
The United Nations voiced alarm on Tuesday at Australia’s decision to “actively and indefinitely separate” the family of a recognised refugee in the country by deporting her husband to Sri Lanka.
The UN refugee agency warned that “the deportation overnight of the father leaves his Sri Lankan partner, who is a recognised refugee, alone with their 11-month-old daughter”.
UNHCR said that before the deportation it had appealed to the Australian government to allow the man to stay with his family.
The move, it warned in a statement, “contravenes the basic right of family unity, as well as the fundamental principle of the best interests of the child”.
The UN has long criticised Australia’s policy of “offshore processing and deterrence”, which since 2013 has seen asylum seekers who have reached the country shipped off to remote camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
