Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Australian Parliamentary Delegation's field visit to Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, and ask leave of the House to make a short statement in connection with the report.

Leave granted.

This was the inaugural visit of its type by the Australian parliament. The visit was of a format designed to allow myself and the Opposition Whip, Mr Hayes, to explore and examine a particular issue. This issue was really not one, as we thought about how a field visit might progress, that would be described as a jolly or a junket to a European destination, or to talk with our close friends in the United States; this was to look at a very significant humanitarian issue of concern facing this world right now.

The theme of the visit was about asylum seekers and to have an understanding of the current conflicts in Syria and Iraq, which have resulted in the movement of large numbers of people into their neighbouring countries. We had the opportunity of visiting Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, and to see the impact that this crisis is having in those countries. You will find an acknowledgement of the very large numbers of people involved, those serving the international community, those involved in the governments of the respective countries and our officials that we met in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. I found this extraordinarily insightful and I am glad we had the opportunity at the end of last year on our return to hold a forum and to brief members on this conflict.

The conflict began only some four years ago and it has had an enormous impact. Something in the order of 191,000 have been killed as a result of this conflict. As at November last year, an estimated 10.6 million to 10.8 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria, and this included approximately 6.5 million people internally displaced, and another 2.9 to 3.2 millions Syrians registered and awaiting registration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the adjoining countries.

This conflict has led to an extraordinary increase in the numbers of refugees and displaced people. When you look at the comparative figures and the way in which they have increased, we have seen from 2010 the UNHCR reporting 33.9 million people of concern globally. When you look at this particular conflict, it has added to those numbers so significantly that they have gone to 46.3 million people of concern.

In this report, you will find some very insightful discussions about resolving this crisis. The conclusion that we have drawn is that there is unlikely to be any quick resolution. This problem is going to continue and there are various suggestions as to how you might be able to deal with it. But I think people need to understand that it has reached such a crisis point now that adjoining countries like Lebanon and Jordan, and even Turkey, are looking at closing their borders, restricting the opportunities for people to flee. Turkish officials have been talking about trying to create safe zones in Syria, which they describe as no-fly buffer zones, to which people might flee. Approaches like this are hardly likely to have any impact.

If members read the report, they will find some interesting photographs, showing how close we got to situations of potential danger. But these are risks that are facing millions of people in this area everyday. One of the issues we have looked at is not only how the international community should be responding to this situation—a situation which I think is almost out of sight, out of mind to most Australians. But with the prospect of borders being closed in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, the international community is going to have ask how is it going to continue to see a situation where people can seek sanctuary. I was a minister at the time when Australia had to look at this same sort of issue in relation to the Balkans and what was happening in Kosovo. Members may remember that because of the prospect of borders being closed in Albania, the international community, in order to encourage it to still receive people, had to recognise that there was a need for potential burden sharing.

One of the recommendations that my colleague and I have made in this report is that the delegation does recommend that the Australian government explore, with international partners, a Kosovo-type solution for providing medium-term protection for displaced people in the Middle East. From my own experience in sitting down and talking to young people in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey who had fled, they were still saying, 'Our objective is to be able to return home.' But unless there is some immediate prospect of people being able to return home, that is highly unlikely. If borders are likely to be closed, the international community has to look further at how it may be able to respond to these issues.

We have highlighted in this report the problem that children, and so many of the people who have fled are children, are facing. You will find in the report some of the schools that we visited and the situations where the international community is responding, but what the report does bring out is that they are only a small proportion of the young people displaced. We are likely to see generations of young people denied formal education because they have had to flee and the international community and neighbouring countries have not been able to put in place appropriate arrangements. This prompted us to look at the question of the way in which Australia might be able to help, and the delegation recommends that the Australian government acknowledge the value and importance of education for child refugees and work with its international partners to support efforts to provide free and effective education to child refugees in the Middle East.

It is not enough to expect that Lebanon is going to be able to take refugee children when you understand that Lebanon, with a population of a little over three million people, has 1½ million refugees. Just imagine if, in every one of our schools tomorrow, for every student we had possibly another student from a refugee background entering the school who needed assistance. Just imagine what pressure it would put on our institutions. These countries are facing enormous problems in being able to respond in a positive way to this situation.

The report details something of the way in which the countries that we have mentioned have been responding, but it highlights the need for further international support for Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, which are under such horrific pressure. We recommend that the Australian government do its part in sharing the burden of the crisis in the Middle East and make appropriate commitments in the upcoming UNHCR pledging conference because these particular countries are going to need support.

I have travelled extensively in this region before and I know something of Lebanon, something of Jordan and something of Turkey, and the extent to which people in these surrounding countries are burdened needs to be acknowledged and understood. We are not experiencing people seeking to flee to Australia as asylum seekers as a result of this issue, but it should not in any way diminish our willingness to respond to this report and to look at ways and means in which Australia can help those countries, who are particularly burdened at this time.

Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—Together with the member for Berowra, the Father of the House, I had the honour of attending this first parliamentary field visit to Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. In fairness to the member for Berowra, his view, that he successfully argued amongst the committee considering this, is that the position in the Middle East at the moment, the conflict that is unfolding, is likely to affect decisions throughout the globe, including those of Australia, for some time into the future. Therefore, if we are to be serious in looking at issues such as asylum seekers, we should actually look clearly at those aspects that are right at the crux of this, particularly as they occur at the moment in the Middle East.

This is a conflict that started in 2011. It started as a protest movement and has developed into a full-scale civil war. It is no longer just impacting on the people of Syria or those throughout the Middle East; this conflict has implications globally. We have seen much reported about the fragmentation of the Free Syrian Army and we now see the involvement of ISIS, or Daesh as it is referred to. We have been advised by many in the UN that various remnants of the former Ba'athist-led Iraqi military are engaged. The point is that this escalation of the conflict was beyond the estimations of all the authorities at that time.

When we visited, and particularly when we first went to Jordan and visited the refugee camps there, they showed us two styles of their camps. The one that was originally established to accommodate this crisis was planned for a period not extending beyond three months because the expectations of the United Nations was that this conflict would not exceed three months. What we have now is a conflict where there is no end in sight, and certainly it probably will not involve a military solution. We particularly wanted to look at the consequences of this for the people.

In terms of refugees, Syria has a population of 12 million people. More than half of that population is now displaced. We know that there have been, by this stage, probably 200,000 people killed in that conflict. We know also, from the UN, that over half the international aid budget at the moment is directed to the displaced people and the Syrian refugees—over half of the total world aid budget is now directed there, for a conflict which would not, it was originally thought, extend beyond three months.

The other thing that was just painfully obvious to us was that the countries bordering Syria—namely, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon—are hosting the vast majority of refugees: according to the UN, in the vicinity of 97 per cent. Jordan, I think, are hosting a little over 600,000 refugees—almost 20 per cent of their country. Turkey are hosting, I think, about 1.3 million refugees. And the Father of the House has just indicated that Lebanon, a country of close to four million people, hosts almost two million refugees. That would be, in an Australian context, like us having about 12 million refugees temporarily on our doorstep and needing education and health care and all the assistance that would generally apply.

These are countries with very limited budgets. They all indicated the economic strain that they were facing. The consequences of this development meant that, in many instances, a number of the companies in their areas were getting rid of or terminating locally engaged employees and putting on Syrian refugees because, essentially, they would work almost just for food—and I can understand that, if you were that desperate, you probably would. But it is also leading to very significant resentment in those host countries at the moment. Populations of those host countries are at the sharp end of this, relatively unassisted by the international community. I know there is assistance there, but certainly not proportionate to the load that they are carrying—a humanitarian load, for which we, in the global community, are all very much in their debt.

I will speak of one personal experience from visiting over there. We did not simply spend time in the refugee camps and see the children, which I will come back to, but at one stage we visited the Jordanian border guards and their headquarters, adjacent to the Syrian border. They were very pleasant; they were very kind to us. They were very hospitable and treated us to a nice lunch. There was fantastic scenery. They could point out the border of Syria. Here was this town, some 10 kilometres away, I think, Father of the House. Anyway, we agreed, together with the Australian ambassador, to do a piece to camera with the leadership of the Syrian border guard. So we went outside, and they set up their tripods and got their cameras set. As we were speaking to camera, people behind the camera—the audience, if you like—started pointing behind us. They could see smoke plumes going up. And, as we turned around, we felt the percussion from the explosions. There was an artillery attack taking place on a town some 10 kilometres away. So, while we were being hosted by the Jordanian border guard, and were there, in safety, we knew that, 10 kilometres away from us, people were being killed. That really brought home to us how significant this is. This is not something you could just disengage from and say, 'This was just another visit we had, and we will report this when we get back to our parliament.' This was a visit from which you could not come away unaffected.

As the member for Berowra indicated, we did visit refugee camps everywhere we went, and one of the consistent things that was put to us by everyone we spoke to, through interpreters, was that they wanted to go home. That was all they wanted: they wanted to go home. But, as I said earlier, there is no end in sight to this conflict.

The children that we visited there, the lucky children that we visited, were in tent classrooms. They had very dedicated teachers there, trying to address their issues. Many of these kids obviously come in with social and emotional baggage, so they are addressing that but also trying to continue these Syrian children's education. In Syria they had a very well established, well developed education system. But the truth is that the kids that Philip Ruddock and I saw were the lucky kids. Even though they were in tents—some sitting on floors; some just sitting at small tables—they were the lucky kids, because the vast majority of children will not be receiving an education. Their education under the former Syrian system has been interrupted, and, in many cases, discontinued.

Unfortunately for a majority of these kids, they are going to be the expendable assets for some other jihadist of tomorrow. They have no hope, no education, and no prospect of being part of an effort to rebuild their towns and cities. There is nothing in sight. I have to say: for anyone who has kids or grandkids, this is something very palpable. One thing that we all must stay focused on is providing a future for them. A future has to be provided for these children.

I think the member for Berowra is right in indicating that, in the next pledging round, Australia must accept its responsibility. Part of that goes back to our having been, indelibly, part of this development in the Middle East since 2003. We were part of the coalition of the willing that went into Iraq. This has had its genesis not necessarily in the protest movements in Syria but in what occurred in Iraq. In the Middle East it is not just lines on a map. We are talking about people who probably see it as tribe and family first and then country. That is what Daesh is trying to capitalise on when they talk about a caliphate. They are not trying to recognise the borders of Syria or Iraq. They are talking about extending this throughout the Middle East. There has been an eradication of levels of authority and administration, and a power void has been established which has enabled interlopers such as IS, or Daesh, to gain traction.

One thing that that seems obvious to both the member for Berowra and me is that this will not resolve itself through a military solution. There must be a negotiated outcome and probably a political outcome. That is something we never thought about 12 months or so ago. These are things that we must apply ourselves to. If we do not, young people over there will have no future other than to become assets for someone who sees their lives as expendable. We need to accept our responsibilities not simply because of our involvement in the Middle East going back to 2003 but because we as a nation know that this particular conflict has implications for all of us around the globe. This conflict will not go away unless we can help accommodate that.

I would like to reflect briefly on the highly valued work of the various agencies of the United Nations such as UNICEF and Save the Children and the many people that we met over there. Many Australians were there working with these agencies in sometimes very squalid conditions. They were doing it because they believe in a future for these people.

The figures that the member for Berowra and I have used for this report are authoritative figures provided by various agencies. As I said, we visited many of the UN-run refugee camps and the camps run by the Turkish government. While we were in Lebanon we also went past some of the informal camps there. The more developed camps are tent cities with power and sewerage. But let me tell you what we found in the informal camps. If members go to the report, they will find a photograph there. These camps were basically bits of plastic strung together—no latrines, no toilets, no power and no water. They were just sheets of plastic drawn across a tree or across a few boxes and people were living there. As I said, you could not possibly come away from this field visit unaffected.

I commend Sophie Dunston, the secretary of the committee, for her efforts. It was a pleasure to travel with her. It was also a pleasure to travel with the father of the House, the member for Berowra. He is a man of compassion who is certainly committed to seeing a brighter outcome for the people of the Middle East.