ABSTRACT

Australia’s preferred role in global efforts to deal with asylum seekers is to be a country of resettlement. This chapter explores whether Australia bears any legal responsibility for respecting, protecting and/or fulfilling the human rights of intercepted asylum seekers who are caught by those arrangements. Australia is a party to all of the core human rights treaties except the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. Since approximately early 2000, Australia has had an arrangement in place with the Indonesian government and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which Australia refers to as a Regional Cooperation Arrangement (RCA). Until relatively Indonesia allowed most asylum seekers who fell within the scope of the RCA to live in Australian funded IOM provided accommodation with a reasonable degree of freedom of movement. IOM is an inter-governmental organisation with a membership of 127 states.