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Australia’s foreign affairs minister Marise Payne and prime minister Scott Morrison
Marise Payne and Scott Morrison say the government continues to make progress bringing Australians home, but more than 36,000 remain stuck overseas. Photograph: Sam Mooy/Getty Images
Marise Payne and Scott Morrison say the government continues to make progress bringing Australians home, but more than 36,000 remain stuck overseas. Photograph: Sam Mooy/Getty Images

UN urges Australia to act quickly to bring stranded Australians home

This article is more than 2 years old

The human rights committee’s request, as it hears two cases about citizens’ ‘right to return’, should be a wake-up call for the government, advocates say

A United Nations request that Australia promptly allow the return of two citizens from the United States should be “a wake-up call” for the government, according to a group campaigning to help thousands of stranded Australians.

The UN human rights committee is considering separate complaints from two Australians, Jason George, who lives in New Jersey, and Alex, who lives in Hawaii and did not want his surname used, about the impact of Australia’s strict caps on international arrivals.

They are being assisted by the leading human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC and they are among more than 36,000 Australians abroad who are currently registered as wishing to return home.

The human rights committee wrote to the complainants on Thursday to say it had requested Australia “facilitate and ensure the author’s prompt return to Australia, while his case is pending before the committee”.

One of the letters, posted online by a lawyer involved in the cases, made clear the committee had not yet made any decision on the substance of the complaint – but said the implementation of those interim measures “should be immediate”.

The UN Human Rights Committee has accepted our submissions that the petitioners would suffer “irreparable harm” if not permitted to return home and ordered their “immediate” repatriation to Australia. @FreeandOpenAust pic.twitter.com/CuA2gFoQHn

— Lionel Nichols (@LionelNichols) April 15, 2021

Both men have already been vaccinated for Covid-19 and are willing to do 14 days of quarantine on arrival to Australia, their supporters say.

The complaints cite the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which says “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his [or her] own country”. They argue the government’s caps on returned travellers and the states’ limits on hotel quarantine places are impinging on their right to return.

But a final decision on the substantive case isn’t expected soon: Australia has been given an eight-month deadline to submit its formal responses.

Deb Tellis, a spokesperson for the campaign group FreeandOpenAustralia.org, said the interim move was “a bit of a wake-up call to the Australian government”. She hoped it would trigger wider action to help the thousands of stranded Australians.

“These guys have taken their action further in order to get their way back home. I think it’s an example of how the system is failing,” said Tellis, whose group was formerly known as Stranded Aussies.

“If people are having to go to the UN it doesn’t look good around the world that Australians are knocking on the the UN door saying help me get home.”

Tellis – who was finally able to return to Australia from India with her daughter last month, and spent two weeks at the Howard Springs quarantine facility in the Northern Territory – said many stranded Australians would be watching the UN case closely.

Tellis said the situation was “dire” for a lot of Australians who were unable to return home, and there was a sense of “losing hope”. She called for an expansion of quarantine capacity so that the international arrival caps could be lifted.

Amnesty International said stranded Australians were at risk of becoming forgotten Australians.

A campaigner for Amnesty International, Joel MacKay, said the Australian government “should be ashamed that it had to take the UN to tell them to act on this”, and it should respond to the ruling as soon as possible.

“Australians have been and are continuing to be harmed, by the government’s slow and bungled approach to getting them home amid the global pandemic crisis,” MacKay said in a statement.

“People have been left homeless, unemployed, absolutely penniless, and stressed and anxious.”

The number of Australians overseas who are registered as wishing to return to Australia was about 36,200 as of last month, according to figures provided to the latest round of Senate estimates. That number included 4,860 identified as vulnerable Australians.

Officials said the top five countries where such Australians were located were India, UK, US, Philippines and Thailand.

Labor has previously accused the prime minister, Scott Morrison, of failing to meet the “home by Christmas” assurance he offered stranded Australians last year. But the foreign minister, Marise Payne, has argued the government has made significant progress.

“Between 18 September and Christmas 63,100 Australians returned from overseas; that included more than 24,800 Australians registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade,” Payne told the Senate estimates hearing last month.

“Of those that included 5,150 who were classified as vulnerable.

“In the six weeks prior to Christmas, the department made over 50,000 offers of places on flights to Australians registered overseas to support that return process.”

Comment on the interim UN decision has been sought from Payne and Dfat.

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