World Vision backs Bill for refugee medical transfers from offshore detention

Thursday, December 6, 2018

World Vision Australia is calling for the Australian Parliament to pass the Bill to medically evacuate refugee children remaining on Nauru and ensure a proper medical transfer process for those ill in offshore detention.

CEO Claire Rogers, who launched the Kids Off Nauru campaign along with humanitarian organisations and refugee advocates in August, said: “Already 12 people have died in offshore detention. This is not about borders, it’s about lives.”

“By missing this opportunity to pass laws that will help seriously ill children and adults get the treatment they need, we are condemning them to further, unacceptable exposure traumatic conditions in offshore detention,” she said.

“It is way past time for the Australian Parliament to put humanity first, to stop failing in our international obligations to care for displaced people who ask us for help and to never again subject children and adults to cruel and indefinite detention.”

She said the legislation before the Parliament, brought about by a coalition of cross benchers in the Lower House and the Senate, the Australian Greens and the Australian Labor Party would address the critical medical crisis faced by thousands of refugees subjected to five years of indefinite detention.

The Bill calls for urgent medical transfers to Australia for critically ill men, women and children remaining in offshore detention to save their lives.

Three months ago, the campaign set a deadline for the government to get children and their families transferred to Australia by Universal Children’s Day, November 20 and to find resettlement solutions either here or in a third suitable country that will provide safe, permanent homes.

 

For more information, contact:

Ruth Lamperd (News Editor), 0417 765 947, ruth.lamperd@worldvision.com.au

 

Media Releases, Asia and the Pacific, Children's Rights, Claire Rogers, Human Rights, Humanitarian

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