Last year, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we all experienced being kept apart from our families. We missed out on holding newborn relatives, caring for loved ones who fell ill, and celebrating special days together. These were painful months. But for thousands of refugees in Australia, this has been their reality for years.

Our new major report, Together in Safety, exposes the Australian Government’s deliberate and systematic approach to keeping refugee families apart. Refugees are forced to make an unthinkable choice between their safety, their health and being with the ones they love.

Successive Federal Governments have used three main methods to tear families apart:

1. Separation by endless deprioritisation of certain family reunion applications, effectively denying permanent residents who arrived by boat the prospect of ever being approved for family reunion.

2. Separation by complete ban on family reunion for refugees who hold temporary protection visas.

3. Separation by offshore detention, including those sent offshore while family members remained in Australia, and those separated during a medical evacuation.

As a result, tens of thousands of people live each day apart from their closest family members.

Working with leading psychiatrists, international law barristers and legal organisations in other countries, Together in Safety finds that Australia’s morally unjustifiable approach is:

• deeply harmful to the health of the people kept from their families;

• illegal, as a violation of Australia’s binding international legal obligations; and

• unparalleled among comparable countries

Together in Safety reveals the devastating emotional and physical toll Australia’s separation policy has had on refugee families. The report includes first-hand testimony from families deliberately separated by the Australian Government. It also highlights the happy ending that could be open to all if the Government changed these laws. Dima, Hani and their child Mohammed tell their story after being separated for years by offshore detention and finally being resettled in Canada.