GENEVA: Australia violated the rights of asylum seekers arbitrarily detained on the island of Nauru, a UN watchdog ruled on Thursday, in a warning to other countries intent on outsourcing asylum processing.

The UN Human Rights Commi­ttee published decisions in two cases involving 25 refugees and asylum seekers who endured years of arbitrary detention in the island nation.

The panel of 18 independent exp­erts found that in both cases Aust­ralia violated the rights of migrants, including minors who received insufficient water and healthcare.

“A state party cannot escape its human rights responsibility when outsourcing asylum processing to another state,” committee member Mahjoub El Haiba said in a statement.

The UN body called on Australia to provide adequate compensation to the migrants and to take steps to ensure similar violations do not recur.

The committee has no power to compel states to follow its rulings, but its decisions carry reputational weight.

Australia’s government said it was considering the committee’s views and would give a response “in due course”.

“It has been the Australian government’s consistent position that Australia does not exercise effective control over regional processing centres,” said a spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs.

“Transferees who are outside of Australia’s territory or its effective control do not engage Australia’s international obligations.” Under a hardline policy introduced in 2012, Australia sent thousands of migrants attempting to reach the country by boat to “offshore processing” centres.

They were held in two detention centres — one on Nauru and another, since shuttered, on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.

The UN committee rejected Aus­t­­ra­lia’s argument that rights abuses that occurred on Nauru did not fall within its jurisdiction.

Published in Dawn, January 11th, 2025