In nearly six months, just 36 people have taken up New Zealand’s offer to resettle refugees held in Australian detention camps, including in Nauru, with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) saying that the brutality of Australia’s immigration regime is partly to blame.
In March, the Australian government accepted a long-standing offer from New Zealand to resettle up to 450 refugees from Australia’s regional processing centers over the next three years, at a rate of up to 150 per year.
However, after nearly six months, uptake has been slow — stymied by the dire mental health of prospective applicants.
The UN and the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand say many refugees are so traumatized by their years in prison camps that they lack capacity to apply, or have lost trust in the asylum process.
In theory, more than 1,200 people could have applied — about 110 refugees and asylum seekers in Nauru, and about 1,100 temporarily brought to Australia.
So far 36 people have been submitted by the UNHCR for resettlement to New Zealand under this arrangement, and, according to the New Zealand government, only 14 have been interviewed.
“The mental health impact of what these individuals have experienced over the past nine years has significantly affected their capacity to engage in the resettlement process and has led to a general lack of confidence in the processes,” said Emily Chipman, senior durable solutions officer at the UNHCR’s regional office in Canberra. “Refugees have evoked concerns about leaving family members behind in Australia, and about not being psychologically strong enough to rebuild their lives in a new country after all they have gone through over the past nine years.”
Chipman said that of more than 1,100 refugees being held in Australia, less than 14 percent had expressed interest in resettling in New Zealand. Those still awaiting outcomes on their applications to other countries — such as the US and Canada — cannot be referred to New Zealand. Because of that, less than 9 percent of those in Nauru are currently eligible.
New Zealand Minister of Immigration Michael Wood on Thursday told reporters that the low numbers came as fewer people than expected self-nominated to settle in New Zealand.
“There’s nothing that we can do to force the people concerned to pursue this pathway,” he said.
Wood said he had “had a number of productive discussions with home affairs minister Clare O’Neil in Australia, who has oversight of the deal from the Australian government’s end, and I think they’re very positively engaged in the process,” he said.
New Zealand lawmaker Golriz Ghahraman, the Greens’ refugee spokesperson, said the delays were partly because many of the refugees concerned are highly traumatized and suffering from major mental health issues, with some skeptical that the offer was real and would not be withdrawn.
“There’s a whole lot of people who are really hard to process because of the very severe mental health harms,” Ghahraman said she was told in meetings with UNHCR officials. “They are struggling to get information out of them, or get them to even want to apply.”
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