Australia’s migration laws should aim to reunite people with their loved ones, not deliberately keep them apart. The Human Rights Law Centre advocates for an end to cruel migration policies that intentionally separate refugee families.

PROJECT | Migration Justice 

Australia’s migration laws should aim to reunite people with their loved ones, not deliberately keep them apart. But for more than ten years, Australian migration laws and policies have deliberately separated refugee families and prevented people from reuniting with loved ones.

Successive governments have used punitive and discriminatory policies, exorbitant costs, limited places and unreasonable delays to separate families, sometimes for decades.

For refugee families in particular, family separation is used as a tool to punish and deter people from seeking safety in Australia. Thousands of refugees have been forced to live apart from their partners and children for more than ten years.

Legal action to challenge separation of refugee families

In 2022, the Human Rights Law Centre supported one family to challenge these delays in court. Our client Abdullah, who has permanent refugee protection in Australia, applied to be reunited with his wife Fatima and their children back in 2017.

Fatima and the children had been living as refugees in Pakistan after a missile attack destroyed their home in Afghanistan, tragically killing one child and seriously injuring another.

For almost five years, the Australian government refused to process Abdullah and Fatima’s family visa application, so the Human Rights Law Centre supported the family to challenge the delay in court.

Just weeks before the court hearing, the government conceded the case and granted the family’s visas. Fatima and the children have now been reunited with Abdullah in Australia and have begun rebuilding their lives together in safety.

Refugee families take their advocacy to the United Nations

Since 2018, the Human Rights Law Centre has supported 63 people from 13 refugee families in the largest ever UN complaint against the Australian Government’s intentional separation of families between Australia and offshore detention camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. 

In 2023, the families submitted their final arguments and evidence, and now await a final decision from the UN Human Rights Committee. The Human Rights Law Centre will continue to stand with refugee families to fight these cruel tactics in the courts, on the international stage and through public advocacy.  

We have run information sessions and set up legal clinics on family reunion in partnership with South-East Monash Legal Service to challenge the delay in processing of their visa applications. This has included accessing Departmental records, advocating to decision-makers and preparing litigation to bring an end to processing delays. Through these multiple efforts, several refugee families have now successfully been reunited in safety in Australia.