Scott Morrison suggest the 1951 UN Refugee Convention needs revisiting.

THE international agreement that for almost 60 years has formed the bedrock of Australia's refugee program no longer reflects the practical reality of refugee movements across the world, opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said yesterday. 
 
He said the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, conceived in the ashes of World War II when millions of displaced people were in camps in Europe, did not adequately address contemporary challenges. In particular, he said, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees must do more to crack down on secondary movements, where refugees pass through multiple countries in search of preferred countries of asylum, invariably Western ones.

This forum shopping distorted the intent of the convention, which was designed to protect people fleeing from acute states of persecution, such as the South Vietnamese, who took to boats after the fall of Saigon, or Jews fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe. "That's a world of difference between people getting on planes to Indonesia or Malaysia as part of an integrated package to get to an asylum country of choice. That's not what the convention was designed to address," he said. Mr Morrison's comments followed The Weekend Australian report that the number of refugees resettled from overseas camps had dipped to the lowest in 35 years, because of the pressure boatpeople were placing on the humanitarian visa program.

Start of sidebar.

Yesterday, Greens and refugee groups criticised the longstanding policy linking the number of humanitarian visas to boat arrivals, saying it created a deadly incentive for people to risk their lives on boats.

Mr Morrison said countries that regularly agreed to resettle UN-declared refugees - such as Australia, Canada, the US and Britain - were shouldering an unfair burden.
"The big resettlers are being short-changed by UNHCR," Mr Morrison said. "We would work with other resettlement countries to look at how we can ensure the scarce resettlement places are put to best effect."

Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young savaged the policy, implemented under the Howard government, under which any increase in boat arrivals leads to a subsequent decrease in the special humanitarian visas granted to people subject to gross human right violations and to family reunions.
Refugee advocates said some of the world's most vulnerable people in camps across Africa commonly faced a 20-year wait to get to Australia.
Writing in The Weekend Australian on Saturday, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said many of his constituents who had relatives in Africa, Asia and the Middle East spoke of a similar plight.

The minister said "fairness" was a key reason why offshore processing should be supported.
But Senator Hanson-Young rejected Labor's latest attempt to galvanise support for its Malaysia Solution, saying the government's policy of linking humanitarian visas with boat arrivals was "wrong and damaging" and ended up pushing vulnerable people on to boats. "Australia is the only nation that caps and links humanitarian visas in this way, and there is no sound policy reason for it other than to create the false impression of a 'queue'," she said.
"The government and the Coalition are locked in a race to the bottom as they pretend there are 'good' and 'bad' refugees."
Yesterday, Environment Minister Tony Burke told Sky News's Australian Agenda the Greens' hardline position on border protection was at the heart of Labor's frustration with its alliance partner, which had spilled over into a bitter and public battle about electoral preferences.
Refugee agent Marion Le said the backlog of people waiting to be reunited with family or granted special humanitarian visas is "enormous".

"The fact is the most vulnerable people are suffering the most," Ms Le said. "This is a really big problem, and it is extremely serious for refugees in Australia who have family members overseas, there is a lot of guilt and a lot of anxiety and it leaves people encouraging their family to try to come by boat," she said.

Ms Le said many people live and die in African refugee camps with no prospect of resettlement, while others wait about 20 years to come to Australia.
Fellow refugee advocates Pamela Curr and Ian Rintoul said a policy which directly ties the number of humanitarian visas to the number of boat arrivals only encouraged more people to risk their lives making the dangerous boat journey. "I am really concerned at the way that this government policy is setting groups of refugees against each other, I hear it in the community," Ms Curr said.
Scott Morrison suggest UN Refugee Convention needs revisiting.
But she warned that refugee camps were often ripe with corruption and did not always award resettlement places to those who needed them most.
Mr Rintoul called for the number of humanitarian visas to be disassociated from those granted to asylum-seekers.