Abstract
Australia’s ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’ has been described by Australia’s then Minister for Home Affairs as promoting a ‘strong border protection’ policy by seeking to have ‘people who attempt to travel to Australia illegally by boat [be] turned back, or transferred to a regional processing country for assessment of asylum claims’. In practice, it is a policy that sends those seekers who arrive in Australia by boat (unauthorised maritime arrivals or UMAs) to extraterritorial detention centres on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea (now closed) and Nauru (Offshore Detention Centres). UMAs are detained in these centres while their asylum claims are processed, and a third country resettlement option is made available. In short, the Australian immigration policy is centred on two practices in dealing with UMAs at sea: (1) ‘pushbacks’; and (2) referring persons to Offshore Detention Centres. The policies have drawn strong criticism for falling short of Australia’s international law obligations. The fact that over 2,000 deaths have been recorded of persons ‘in custody’ of Australian border authorities between 2000 and 2023 is furtherance of the same.