AT WHAT COST?

4.4 Impact of closing-off resettlement options for refugees from Indonesia
In November 2014, the then Immigration Minister Scott Morrison announced that Australia would no longer accept
refugees for resettlement from Indonesia and that this new policy would apply to any refugee who arrived in Indonesia
after 1 July 2014. This, along with a reduction in resettlement places for those who arrived before July 2014, was intended
to ‘drain the pool’ of asylum seekers and refugees in Indonesia. 174 Minister Morrison publicly stated 'We are trying to
remove the incentive for people to travel to Indonesia as a destination as a good neighbour.' 175 What this means, in
effect, is that asylum seekers who travel to Indonesia and who are assessed by the UNHCR to be refugees and eligible
for resettlement, can never resettle in Australia if they arrived in Indonesia after 1 July 2014. This policy has nothing to do
with people who attempt to travel to Australia by boat. It applies to those who might otherwise have settled in Australia
through the regular, well-worn pathways of resettlement established between Australia and the UNHCR.
At the time of this announcement the Indonesian Minister for Justice and Human Rights Yasonna Laoly commented
‘[i]t’s Australia’s right, but it becomes a burden for us’. 176 In 2016 the Indonesian Government joined the UNHCR in
subsequently calling on Australia to revoke this position. 177
Rather than ‘draining the pool’ it is now apparent that this policy has actually created a backlog of refugees in Indonesia
who are awaiting an opportunity for resettlement through UNCHR channels, with one of the most historically significant
of those channels suddenly, and without warning, closed off. UNHCR cites that ‘[i]n Indonesia, during the past one
decade (2004 - 2014) as many as 3,108 people were resettled to third countries, in particular Australia. 178 It is not clear
how Minister Morrison expected that his new policy would ‘drain the pool’, in the absence of additional or alternative
resettlement pathways opening up.
At the time of Minister Morrison’s announcement, he reported that there were 10,000 people
in Indonesia awaiting resettlement. 179 In February 2016, the UNHCR’s Indonesia operation
reported 13,829 refugees and asylum seekers registered with its Jakarta office, 180 a number
which is likely to underestimate the true number of asylum seekers and refugees in the
country. Based on the observation that globally approximately half of the world’s refugees are
now children, 181 it is reasonable to assume that there may be as many as 7000 asylum seeker
and refugee children in Indonesia in need of effective protection and durable solutions.
Hussein’s Story
The people affected by this sudden change in policy include children like Hussein, a Hazara from Afghanistan, who
an Australian journalist met camped outside of the UNHCR office in Jakarta shortly after this policy announcement:
He’s 15 and has bedded down here since arriving in Indonesia a week ago.
Hussein says he did not know when he left Afghanistan about Scott Morrison’s new policy to ignore refugee applications
from people who arrived in Indonesia after July 1. He knows now that he will never get his wish of resettlement in Australia,
but says he probably would have come anyway. He feels he had no choice.
“My mother was sick . . . and she wanted to go from Jaghory to Kabul for the doctor. On the way, beside the road, there
was a bomb. When they got close in the taxi, the bomb exploded,” he says.
Hussein’s mother, father and sister were all killed. He fled for his life, selling the family’s possessions and paying a people
smuggler $US6000 (AUD$7200).
Now he has no money and faces an indeterminate wait in Indonesia, where he cannot go to school or earn a living. 182
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