In the media
Offshore operations and PNG
The Australian government agreed a new funding deal with the government of Papua New Guinea for assistance to the refugees who remain there. Australian Border Force intercepted more boats en route from Indonesia to Australia. Our statistics page provides an overview of the number of boat intercepts or arrivals over recent years.
The Israeli-Hamas war
A significant rise in the number of Palestinians applying for protection from within Australia has resulted in refugee advocates calling for the creation of a specific emergency uplift visa. This would end the situation where people escaping war must rely on tourist visas to enter Australia. A bill to declare UNRWA a terrorist organisation passed the first reading in the Israeli Knesset. UNRWA schools continued to be targeted by Israeli military airstrikes.
Afghanistan
ABC’s Earshot program published a story on how a group of Australians helped a young couple to escape Afghanistan. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees visited Pakistan to encourage the government to regularise the status of Aghan refugees there and to urge the international community to assist large refugee-hosting countries like Pakistan.
International
As the largest ever Olympic refugee team commenced competition in Paris, the IOC named the 2024 Paralympic refugee team. Only one of the Olympic refugee team members lives in Africa. A Somali refugee revealed that he was forcibly conscripted into the Russian army after he entered their territory in attempt to reach western Europe. The new UK government confirmed that the Rwanda-UK deal has been scrapped.
In policy
The Prime Minister announced Tony Burke as the new Home Affairs Minister and Matt Thistlethwaite as Assistant Minister responsible for immigration. On the eleventh anniversary of the policy announcement, of the then-Labor government, that no person arriving by boat could settle in Australia, the Refugee Council of Australia called for a change in approach.
In research
The IOM, MMC and UNHCR published collaborative research that maps the routes and risks refugees face in their journey to safety. The UNHCR piloted its Forced Displacement Survey in South Sudan to examine the impact of the civil war in Sudan on those communities who host the almost 1,600 Sudanese refugees arriving daily. A number of papers on the trend to externalise asylum responsibilities onto other states were published in the Externalizing Asylum website in July.