This article is more than 2 years old

Stateless in Australia: new centre to shine light on those incarcerated
without hope

   This article is more than 2 years old

   Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness to develop responses to crisis
   affecting 10 million people worldwide

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   [ ] A Rohingya refugee child looks through the fence at a refugee camp
   in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Myanmar’s Rohingya are one of the largest
   and most at-risk stateless groups. A new centre has opened in Australia
   to research statelessness. Photograph: Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters

   Every year, nations are asked by the United Nations high commissioner
   for refugees how many stateless people are within its borders. Last
   year, the Australian government told the UN that number was zero.

   Under questioning in Senate estimates, it emerged there were 37
   stateless people being held by the Australian government in immigration
   detention, on average for more than two-and-a-half years.

'Every day I am crushed': the stateless man held without trial by Australia
for eight years

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   On Monday night, a new initiative was launched to shine a light on
   their plight. Professor Michelle Foster from the University of
   Melbourne will head the new Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness with
   a mandate to research the scale of, and reasons for, statelessness and
   to develop responses to it, and work to protect the human rights of
   stateless people.

   “Australia’s record on stateless persons leaves much to be desired,”
   Foster wrote in Pursuit this month. “By way of example, Said has been
   recognised as a stateless person by the Australian Refugee Review
   Tribunal and yet the Australian government refuses to release him from
   detention, or grant him a protection visa.

   “Since there is no Australian visa specifically for stateless persons,
   many are detained indefinitely in Australian immigration detention and
   an unknown number have also been detained offshore in centres on Nauru
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   Globally, it’s estimated up to 10 million people are currently
   stateless. The figure is only a estimate because the number can’t be
   truly gauged – the stateless are, almost by definition, the uncounted.

   Foster told the Guardian the issue of statelessness has existed “since
   there were states”, but that modern international legal efforts have
   not kept pace with the problem.

   “Statelessness became a bit of a forgotten issue … while with refugee
   law we have thousands of decisions emanating out of courts, we have a
   lot of understanding, statelessness has been overlooked from an
   academic point of view. It became clear there is needed, a focal point
   in this region, to better understand this issue, and to develop policy
   to address it.”

   In 1954, a convention on stateless persons was brought into force, just
   three years after the – related – refugees convention. But while the
   refugees convention has become the international standard (though not
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   “And there’s no reason for that,” Foster said. “If you look at the
   statelessness convention, it’s almost word for word [with the refugee
   convention]: you’re outside your country of origin, you require the
   same protection as a refugee. What stateless people really need are the
   protections to allow them to establish a life with dignity in a new
   place.”

   Australia does not have a specific visa for stateless people, despite a
   public pledge in 2011 “committed to minimising the incidence of
   statelessness and to ensuring that stateless person are treated no less
   favourably than people with an identified nationality”. The UNHCR made
   a decade-long commitment in 2014 – I Belong – to eliminate
   statelessness by 2024.

Australia condemns Myanmar violence and says offenders 'must be held to
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   Forty percent of the world’s stateless are in Australia’s region, the
   Asia Pacific.

   The Rohingya ethnic and religious minority of Myanmar are one of the
   largest and most at-risk stateless groups. Denationalised by that
   country’s then-ruling military junta in the 1980s, the Rohingya have
   long suffered ostracisation and persecution, one that has peaked in
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   “The Rohingya situation shows the vulnerability that follows from being
   stateless,” Foster said. “It demonstrates densationslisation as a form
   of persecution, and that has led to even more extreme version of
   persecution.”