Expansion of Anti-Immigration Policy in Oceania Shows Major Threat to Refugee Rights in the Region

By Sam Biden, Junior Fellow

14 October, 2025

The New Resettlement Agreement

In an expected development, the Australian government has announced a new $1.6b agreement with the Pacific island nation of Nauru to extend and enhance their over decade long migration deal. The new deal, which is set to run for 30 years, will see Nauru resettle hundreds of individuals who have been deemed to possess “no legal right to remain in Australia”, primarily targeting those detained offshore in international waters surrounding Christmas Island. The agreement was signed behind closed doors in early September 2025. Under its terms, Nauru has committed to resettling up to 354 people in exchange for a substantial financial package. This includes an immediate payment of $267m USD, followed by annual payments of roughly $46 million USD for the 30-year duration.

The Current Framework (2013-Present)

In August 2013, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd signed a Memorandum of Understanding with former Nauruan President Baron Waqa, expanding Australia’s regional detention framework. The agreement almost entirely mirrored a parallel arrangement with Papua New Guinea (PNG), yet an additional malicious provision was included – the forced resettlement of recognized refugees. The distinction between asylum seekers and refugees is clear: an asylum seeker has not been granted international protections from a state while a refugee has been legally classified as having additional protections aimed at, among other things, preventing forced resettlement. In doing so, the Australian government has ignored the special status afforded to these individuals, arbitrarily overriding court proceedings that determined the individual is a refugee in the first place. The government’s immediate focus, as outlined in the agreement, was on transferring family groups and unaccompanied minors for settlement. Offshore processing was no longer presented as temporary containment pending removal – it was reframed as a mechanism for permanent settlement outside Australia’s borders.

In the current day, Australia’s migration framework has evolved in ways that further erode the rights of those subject to removal. In 2024, the Migration Amendment Bill introduced new mechanisms for what it termed “third country reception arrangements”, similar to those found in the bargains with PNG and Nauru. These provisions authorized the transfer of “removal pathway non-citizens” – individuals classified as having no right to remain in Australia, to foreign states willing to receive them, further expanding away from legal asylees and refugees to anyone deemed unfit for Australian society. Under the amendments, anyone who has a valid visa, be it vocational or merely for visiting family, could have it immediately revoked without advanced notice.

The following year, a new bill would deepen this trajectory by explicitly restricting the application of “natural justice” within the Migration Act, a crucial component found in virtually every legal system in one way or another. Ordinarily, natural justice represents due process and procedural fairness and ensures two safeguards: the right to be informed of the case against oneself and to be heard before a decision is made and the guarantee that decision-makers are impartial and free from bias. With this new bill, natural justice through the courts can be revoked if granted by legislation, allowing the courts to bring, try and finalize a case with indicators of complicit bias, potentially even politically motivated bias, against an individual who is already afforded the highest degrees of international protection, the status of refugee. A Minister was quoted saying these measures are necessary on the grounds that asylum seekers and other non-citizens were “using procedural fairness to delay and frustrate their removal at cost to the Commonwealth.” In other words, the protections were characterized not as fundamental rights but as tactical obstructions to be eliminated, despite them operating as a primary underpinning of due process globally for centuries.

Conditions at the Regional Processing Centre (RPC)

Afflicting the historic agreements with Nauru have been the reports, cases and testimonies of conditions at the primary RPC on the island. Similarly to reports highlighting human rights violations in PNG, the Australia-Nauru partnership shares overlapping shortcomings.

Despite both governments enforcing strict secrecy and barring most journalists and researchers from entering, Human Rights Watch (HRW) investigators were able to legally access the island for a short period in July 2016, to gather evidence of human rights violations. During their twelve-day stay, they interviewed 84 refugees and asylum seekers from Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Kuwait and Afghanistan, including stateless Kurds, alongside members of staff who bravely spoke out.

In their 2016 report, those interviewed described harrowing living conditions. Many had been confined for more than a year in stifling vinyl tents where temperatures routinely reached between 45-50°C, with torrential rain leaving the facilities flooded and uninhabitable for days at a time. Such prolonged detention intensified existing trauma from persecution and conflict in the detainees’ countries of origin, as well as the dangers they had endured en route to Australia. Refugees reported a wide array of mental health issues, with many stating they were suffering from severe anxiety, depression, memory loss and insomnia, with children being among the most vulnerable, As a result, self-harm and suicidal ideation became a pressing concern, with adults and children openly admitting that they had contemplated ending their lives, yet adequate mental health services remained almost entirely absent. Compounding the issue was the fact the medical facilities available on Nauru were wholly inadequate. Health services were outsourced to International Health and Medical Services (IHMS), a company contracted by the Australian government. Despite this, detainees consistently reported long delays in accessing treatment, a lack of specialist care and dismissive responses from medical staff that led to the worsening of symptoms. Refugees suffering from chronic and life-threatening conditions, such as being given nothing more than painkillers, despite them needing specialized medication and treatment to manage their condition. In urgent cases where transfer to Australia was medically necessary, makeshift policies required patients to travel without family members, an all too familiar tactic seemingly designed to pressure them into returning to Nauru rather than seeking ongoing treatment abroad.

Every refugee and asylum seeker interviewed in 2016 reported experiencing harassment, intimidation or violence at the hands of Nauruan citizens. Accounts included being assaulted, verbally abused and even robberies while travelling to work or shops were commonplace, with attackers routinely stealing money, phones and motorbikes. For women, the risks were particularly acute: many said they rarely left the camps except in groups or under male escort. Six women reported incidents of sexual assault or harassment, including groping, threats of rape and attempted abductions, while another was forced to abandon her job after a single day because of constant physical harassment from colleagues. In nearly all cases, police failed to act, with complaints being dismissed as fabrications for media exposure.

Legal Challenges to Offshore Detention

Conditions in Nauru have not come without legal challenge, although the cases have not provided sure-fire, positive outcomes for future claimants.

A successful outcome for asylum seekers came initially in the case of Nabhari v. Australia (2019), heard by the Human Rights Committee (HRC). The claimant, who arrived on Christmas Island in 2013 with family members, was transferred to Nauru in 2014 under section 198AD of the Migration Act. Despite being recognized as a refugee by Nauruan authorities in 2017, she nevertheless spent years in indefinite detention both offshore and later in mainland Australia. Even when alternatives to detention were legally available under section 197AB of the Migration Act, the Minister for Immigration exercised discretion to deny them without explanation. While in Nauru, she lived in tents at the RPC and was later moved into temporary housing near Anibare Ponds due to a worsening of her medical condition, including polycystic ovarian disease, vertigo and severe psychological trauma. Despite being transferred to Australia in 2018 for medical treatment, she remained in detention facilities for years, separated from close family members.

The Committee found in her favor, holding that Australia’s prolonged and indefinite detention of the claimant was arbitrary, unnecessary and disproportionate under Article 9 of the ICCPR. Importantly, the Committee emphasized that the government had failed to provide any specific, individualized justification for depriving her of liberty for such an extended period. In its ruling, the HRC made clear that Australia’s system of mandatory detention, when applied in such an open-ended and punitive fashion, violated international law.

The second case involving a group, referred to collectively as M.I and Others v. Australia (2025), claimed they had their ICCPR rights violated by Australia, with the case being settled this year. The applicants are refugees forcibly transferred to Nauru between 2013 and 2014, arguing that their removal from Australia and subsequent confinement in the RPC constituted a violation of their rights. The group was intercepted at sea by Australian authorities and initially detained on Christmas Island. Pursuant to the memorandum of understanding, they were later transferred offshore, when upon arrival, they were subjected to appalling conditions; tents housing up to 26 people with little privacy, stifling heat reaching 30°C with high humidity and limited access to clean water, sanitation facilities and medical aid. Families described a lack of communication services that left them isolated from the outside world, unable to contact family members outside of Nauru.

Their case emphasized that they had no effective legal remedy to challenge either their forcible transfer or their continued detention. Australian courts lacked jurisdiction over Nauru as judicial jurisdiction is not covered in any of their agreements, while Nauru’s courts were incapable of delivering binding remedies, particularly as the ICCPR has not been domestically implemented. Despite these arguments, the Committee rejected the complaint, reasoning that Australia had undertaken individual risk assessments prior to transfer and that the claimants had not shown these assessments to be arbitrary. The decision underscored the high evidentiary threshold required in such cases, effectively insulating Australia’s offshore system from scrutiny at the international level.

Conclusion

Despite the legitimate agreement Australia and Nauru drafted, the implementation of this agreement requires extreme scrutiny on behalf of the contracted parties. As has been demonstrated in the Nabhari case, procedural improprieties serve as the bedrock for successful claims against Australia. Compounding this, the legislative insistence on removing natural justice from the due process guarantees refugees and asylees are typically afforded only causes a greater chance of successive, more impactful civil cases in the future. With the OHCHR playing close attention to the new amendments, international investigations into the RPC will most likely follow as the new program is implemented.

Image: Nauru offshore processing facility (Source: DIAC via CC BY 2.0)