The United Nations has welcomed Australia’s decision to accept an additional 12,000 refugees fleeing the Syrian crisis, and extra funding to help the millions displaced, but has warned the humanitarian crisis remains far greater than the world’s response so far.
Australia announced it would permanently resettle 12,000 refugees from Syria in camps in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.
The extra places – a one-off intake targeted to persecuted minorities, not a permanent increase to Australia’s humanitarian program – would be additional to the humanitarian intake of 13,750 a year.
Australia also pledged an additional $44m for shelter kits, food, water and blankets for those in refugee camps in the region.
“The prime minister’s announcement comes at a crucial time when UNHCR is stretched to capacity in meeting the needs of the most desperate,” the UN’s refugee agency said.
But with winter approaching the UNHCR says there is a funding shortfall of US$2.85bn, meaning refugees have had their food assistance cut by a third.
“Syrian refugees are encountering extreme levels of poverty due to funding shortfalls for refugee programs. Families are forced to remove their children from school and resort to begging on the streets in despair and desperation.”
International refugee lawyers and human rights organisations have also welcomed Australia’s acceptance of more displaced people from the four-year Syrian civil war that has already produced nearly 4 million refugees and displaced more than 7 million people inside the country.
“I’d welcome the announcement of these additional places; they are sorely needed given the large numbers of displaced people,” Prof Jane McAdam, from the Kaldor centre for international refugee law at the University of New South Wales, told Guardian Australia.
“But this needs to be seen in a broader global context. One-off increases will not be sufficient. What is needed is an ongoing, sustained commitment to protect refugees in need.”
Australia could comfortably increase its annual humanitarian intake to at least 25,000, McAdam said.
And Australia needed to abandon the artificial distinction between asylum seekers in overseas camps and those who had travelled to Australia seeking protection.
Some of the people held in detention on Manus Island, Nauru and in Australia have fled the same conflicts, at the same time, as those being considered for resettlement.
“There is no real difference in the nature of these people’s journeys, and this has been recognised in Europe – that it’s not illegal to move to seek asylum. In Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, there is no durable solution, so people have to move, people have to move to find safety and find protection.”
Amnesty International urged that Australia resettle the additional 12,000 people within a year. The government has indicated it hopes the first resettlements will take place before the end of this year, with the full cohort in Australia by mid-2016.
“Thousands more people will now have the chance to live safe and happy lives and make positive contributions to the diverse Australian community,” Amnesty’s Graham Thom said.
“It is a positive demonstration of leadership which hopefully other developed countries will follow.”
The Anglican church’s primate of Australia, Melbourne archbishop Philip Freier, welcomed the government’s decision to accept more refugees, after earlier indicating there would be no increase.
“Tony Abbott’s change of mind from last week is surprising but welcome, and shows how the plight of the Syrian refugees has touched Australians,” he said.
“I also welcome the decision to focus on persecuted religious and ethnic minorities, because their position will remain desperate no matter which side has the advantage in Syria’s civil war.”
In Canberra, the Greens welcomed the announcement that Australia would increase its humanitarian intake, with leader Richard Di Natale saying it was a “turning point” in the discussion about asylum seekers.
“We’re making a real difference to the lives of 12,000 people,” he said.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the government should consider allowing Iraqi and Syrian refugees housed in offshore detention facilities in Nauru and Manus Island to resettle.
“Many of those who are locked up in Australian detention centres from Iraq and Syria have families left in these refugee camps,” Hanson-Young said. “Wouldn’t it be a wonderful gesture of generosity to reunite those families here on Australian soil?”
But the Greens have continued their opposition to airstrikes in Syria. Di Natale said it “makes a bad situation much worse”, and Australia had not learnt its lesson from its military engagement in Iraq.
“The notion that somehow we will make a positive difference to this conflict is misguided, it’s wrong and it’s not supported by the many analysts who understand the situation on the ground,” he said.
The former intelligence analyst-turned independent MP Andrew Wilkie also criticised the decision to expand Australia’s military commitment in the region.
“It is a reckless decision that draws us deeper and deeper into a civil war in the Middle East that has already gone on for more than a decade and is set to go on for a long time yet,” Wilkie said. “There is no practical point in doing this. Our force is so small as to be operationally insignificant. It is not a type of operation that can defeat an unconventional enemy.”
The opposition praised the government for boosting its humanitarian intake, saying the decision reflected the high level of goodwill in the community.
“Importantly, these places are being offered on the basis of need and no other consideration. Our compassion should pay no heed to the colour of a person’s skin or the God they pray to,” the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said.
But Labor criticised the government for “falling short” with its $44m funding pledge for the United Nations refugee agency.
“Labor has made it clear that based on need, an extra $100m is required to aid humanitarian relief efforts effectively in response to the Syrian crisis,” a statement issued by Shorten, the opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, and the opposition spokesman on immigration, Richard Marles, said.
The $44m in additional refugee assistance is dwarfed by Australia’s spending on its deterrence and offshore processing policies which costs $3.3bn a year.
It costs $400,000 to keep one person in offshore detention for a year.
The Australian government pays Transfield about $60m a month to run its detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru, which are holding 1500 people.
It has also paid Cambodia $55m as part of a resettlement agreement which has, so far, resettled four people.
