5주차｜사회·노동·인권 (+ 난민·이주)_조홍진

[조홍진]

Building bridges: Advancing refugee protection in a divided world

Speaker: Hugh de Kretser

Date: 23 October 2025

Words: 399

https://humanrights.gov.au/about-us/media-centre/speeches/hugh-de-kretser/building-bridges-advancing-refugee-protection-in-a-divided-world

glossary

1.    The Refugee Convention: 난민협약

2.    Australian Human Rights Commission: 호주 인권위원회

No one chooses to be a refugee.

Refugees are people forced to flee persecution and violence, leaving their homes to seek freedom and safety elsewhere.

Recognising our common humanity, we have a global responsibility to cooperate to protect refugees.

The Refugee Convention is the international community’s commitment to work together to protect people fleeing violence and persecution.

When Australia agreed to be bound by the Refugee Convention and its 1967 protocol, we agreed to protect refugees who came to our country seeking safety.

Australia has provided safety and a new life in peace and freedom for close to one million refugees and their families since World War 2 - a milestone that reflects decades of humanitarian commitment by our nation.

We continue to provide an important refugee resettlement program giving up to 20,000 humanitarian visas a year. Australia’s contribution is vital, as relatively few countries resettle refugees.

People receiving these humanitarian visas get support from highly regarded settlement services.

We have a reputation as one of the world’s most successful multicultural societies.

We should celebrate all of this.

But over the years, key parts of our refugee policies have hardened.

For those who’ve come across the seas seeking safety, Australia’s policies remain among the harshest in the world.

Instead of protecting people seeking safety who arrive by boat, successive Australian governments have harmed them – intercepting and turning back boats, detaining those that do reach Australia and transferring them to remote offshore islands.

The Australian Human Rights Commission has consistently raised concerns about the harms caused by Australia’s immigration detention, asylum and offshore processing policies. We have called for these policies to end.

There is a better way.

Today I will talk about:

• Our human rights obligations to refugees and people seeking asylum
• A better approach to people seeking safety
• The worrying polarisation, racism and anti-immigration sentiment that is rising in Australia and how to respond.

Human rights are standards that governments around the world have agreed to meet to ensure that everyone can live a safe, free and dignified life.

Human rights belong to all of us, no matter who we are, where we come from, what we look like or what we believe.

Human rights are about being treated fairly and treating others fairly.

Human rights reflect values like equality, freedom, respect, dignity, kindness, compassion, thinking of others and looking out for each other.