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UNE workshop addresses Asia-Pacific refugee crisis

March 03, 2006

KaurAdnan.thumb.JPGThe alarming magnitude of refugee problems throughout the Asia-Pacific region has emerged more clearly than ever before during an international workshop at The University of New England.

The workshop brought together more than 30 participants from various countries in the region, including key speakers from Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia and Hong Kong, and an interdisciplinary group of UNE researchers.

UNE’s Professor Amarjit Kaur, who organised the workshop, said it had highlighted the need for an approach to the “refugee crisis” that focused on human rights as well as border control. “It’s become very clear that, in some Asian countries where governments have not signed the 1991 United Nations Convention on Refugees, refugees are classified as illegal migrants and are subject to imprisonment and, in some cases, corporal punishment and fines,” Professor Kaur said.

“In the past few years the national governments of the region have become increasingly closely engaged in negotiations on cross-border flows of people,” she explained. “However, these negotiations are often conducted at a bilateral level, and frequently focus on collaboration to strengthen border controls. Meanwhile, international treaties and organisations designed to protect the rights of refugees have faced new challenges in the international environment of the twenty-first century.”

One of the keynote speakers at the workshop, Malaysian Human Rights Commissioner Professor Hamdan Adnan (pictured here, at right, with Professor Kaur), developed this theme when he argued that individual security, with its focus on human rights, was ultimately more important than a national security that involved the proliferation of detention camps.

Professor Adnan, who is Chairperson of the Complaints and Inquiries Working Groups of the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia, said the workshop had been a useful exercise in sharing information that could be used in efforts to reduce the flow of refugees. “Australia, as one of the more developed nations in the Asia-Pacific region, could play a bigger role in finding solutions to the region’s refugee problems,” he added.

Professor Kaur said participants in the workshop had agreed that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees was not doing enough to address the crisis in the Asia-Pacific region – particularly when it came to resettling refugees in a third country.

Other keynote speakers at the workshop were Professor Koki Abe from Kanagawa University in Japan, who is a Board member of the Japan Civil Liberties Union and a member of the Refugee Studies Forum, Japan; Dr Riwanto Tirtosudarmo, from the Research Centre for Society and Culture, Indonesian Institute of Science; Ms Devi Novianti, Program Manager, Christian-Action, Hong Kong.

The workshop was sponsored by the International Centre of Excellence in Asia Pacific Studies and the UNE Asia Centre, and forms part of the Asia Pacific Regional Migration Network Forum Program led by Professor Kaur, Professor Tessa Morris-Suzuki (Australian National University) and Professor Kang Sangjung (Tokyo University).

Posted by Jim Scanlan at March 3, 2006 03:39 PM