THE ONGOING IMPACTS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT

Adèle Garnier

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global drop of refugee resettlement, yet the drop has been particularly marked in Australia. Resettlement to Australia was suspended in March 2020 bar travel exemptions. This article puts Australia’s resettlement and COVID experience in context, investigating why the drop in resettlement has been comparatively sharp in Australia, briefly suggesting implications.

Refugee resettlement is a discretionary mechanism of international protection. It is not based on binding international law, in contrast to the provision of asylum. Rather, refugee resettlement involves ‘the selection and transfer of refugees from a state in which they have initially sought protection to a third state that has agreed to admit them with permanent residence status.’ The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ Office (UNHCR) refers the resettlement files of ‘candidates’ it considers particularly vulnerable to resettling states.

Those included are refugees with no prospect of safe return in their countries of origin or local integration in their country of asylum and those at particular individual risk. Yet several resettling states, including Australia, also resettle refugees whose resettlement is supported by individuals or groups on their territory. Still, only a very small minority of the world’s refugees are resettled, and numbers have dwindled since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.

Global decline

In 2019, UNHCR estimated that out of 26 million refugees globally, 1.44 million refugees were in need of resettlement. That year, 107,800 refugees were resettled to 26 countries including 63,726 who were resettled following a UNHCR referral. The other refugees were resettled through what UNHCR refers to as ‘complementary pathways’, that is, following sponsorship in resettling countries by family members or members or the community, or (at smaller scale) through support by educational institutions or employers.

In 2020, the global number of refugees rose to 26.4 million and the number of refugees in need of resettlement remained stable. However, just 22,800 refugees were resettled following UNHCR referral and 34,400 were resettled overall (to 21 countries), a decline of 69% compared to the previous year. There is no doubt that the pandemic is responsible for much of this decline: for instance UNHCR suspended all resettlement operations from March to June 2020 because of COVID-19.

As of October 2021, 29,033 refugees had been resettled following a UNHCR referral. Encouragingly, the figure is already higher than the total of resettlement admissions in 2020. As I and co-authors have written earlier in the pandemic, we might be witnessing a ‘bouncing back’ of refugee resettlement rather than its disappearance. This has been the case in the past following resettlement declines, such as after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Yet, the state of resettlement remains fragile, particularly so in Australia.

Australia’s decline

According to UNHCR data, Australia resettled 3,464 refugees in 2019, 1,082 in 2020 and only 187 in 2021 as of October 2021 following UNHCR resettlement referrals. By contrast, the US had resettled 9,069 and Canada 4,662 after UNHCR referral in 2021 (as of October). Australia has traditionally been the third-largest resettlement country and politicians often praise the country as being particularly generous. What can explain this particularly sharp decline?

Firstly, Australia’s refugee resettlement had been declining before the pandemic. 21,698 humanitarian visas were issued in the 2016-2017 financial year; 19,762 in 2018-2019; 13,171 in 2019-2020; and only 5,947 visas in 2020-21 (see figure 1). Of those, 4,558 were visas for resettled refugees. As the Refugee Council of Australia noted, this is Australia’s smallest Refugee and Humanitarian Program in 45 years. Australia did not manage to meet its target of 13,750 humanitarian visas, yet it reached its target of granting 160,000 visas in the Migration Program. This contrasts the renewed commitment to resettlement under the Biden administration following pressure from civil society after resettlement experienced considerable decline under the Trump administration. Resettlement has also expanded in Canada under Justin Trudeau’s Prime Ministership since 2015, notably through an increase in private refugee sponsorship.

Secondly, Australia’s border closure policy has been particularly strict. Of those refugees who have been granted a visa to resettle in Australia since the beginning of the pandemic, very few have been allowed to do so. In 2020-2021, of the 4,558 visas issued to resettled refugees, about 700 were allowed to travel to Australia. More than 9,500 refugees bound to Australia have yet to be allowed to cross the border. Since 1 November, travel is again permitted to fully vaccinated citizens and permanent residents. Following civil society advocacy, on 22 November the Morrison government announced that fully vaccinated humanitarian visa holders and temporary residents would be allowed to enter Australia from 1 December. Yet with the discovery of the COVID-19 omicron variant this step was paused until 15 December.

Another contributing factor explaining the particularly low resettlement figure of 186 in 2021is the focus on UNHCR referrals. The proportion of refugees resettled to Australia following a UNHCR referral has significantly declined in the last decade. In 2012-2013, 80% of refugees resettled to Australia were resettled following a UNHCR referral, compared to just 23% in 2018-2019. Australia has several visa classes for resettled refugees.

Usually, three visa categories (subclasses 200, 201 and 204) are granted by the Department of Home Affairs to refugees referred by UNHCR, while subclass 202 is for refugee proposed by sponsors in Australia. However, a Freedom of Information request submitted by the Refugee Council of Australia has revealed that an increasing number of refugees in visa subclasses 200, 201 and 204 were selected outside of UNHCR’s recommendations. The Department of Home Affairs has not provided explanations for this shift, which is a stark illustration of Australia’s discretionary powers in selecting refuges for resettlement.

In total we do know that 708 refugees were granted a travel exemption, and landed in Australia, between March 2020 and June 2021 yet we still do not know how many refuges Australia resettled since January 2021. Also, the Department of Home Affairs has yet to release relevant humanitarian program statistics, despite the fact statistics on Australia’s migration program in 2020-2021 have been published.

Implications

Australia’s sharp resettlement decline has several worrisome implications. Thousands of refugees who have been issued a visa for Australia remain stranded in their first country of asylum. Many are in precarious situations as the impact of the pandemic has been particularly devastating on already vulnerable communities in poorer nations. The fact that there are less resettlement spots means that many resettlement candidates experience longer waiting times. In Australia, this is particularly the case for Special Humanitarian Program (SHP) applicants who are often sponsored by Australia-based family members.

The sharp decline of resettlement places also has a major impact on settlement services providers contracted by the federal government. Settlement service providers receive federal subsidies on the basis of the resettlement intake and the intake decline has led to significant job losses. The intake-driven decrease of service availability means that service providers would be in a very difficult position in the event Australia’s humanitarian intake significantly increased.

This is especially relevant in the context of the Afghanistan crisis, advocates calling for increased humanitarian intake in providing refuge to the many Afghans who assisted the Australian Defence Forces during their Afghanistan campaign. Meanwhile, without explanation, the federal government has increased the budget for settlement services following underspending in 2020-21. However, this is certainly no guarantee of a rapid resettlement expansion. The federal government plans to maintain the size of its humanitarian program (including visas granted to asylum seekers recognised as refugees in Australia) at 13,750 visas a year until 2024-2025.

In sum, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a sharp decline in refugee resettlement globally. However, many additional local factors have contributed to Australia’s considerable drop in resettlement places. Australia is now very far from being the world’s third-largest resettling state, and this decline has many worrisome, long-lasting implications for local and global humanitarian protection.

Adèle Garnier is an Assistant Professor at the Département de géographie, Université Laval, Canada and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University’s School of Social Sciences. She is the co-editor of Refugee Resettlement: Power, Politics and Humanitarian Governance (with L. L. Jubilut and K. B. Sandvik Berghahn Books, 2018).