Whatever happened to the right of asylum?

The debate about refugees and asylum seekers is confused by a misunderstanding of the origins of the 1951 Refugee Convention, writes Klaus Neumann in Inside Story • OUR APPROACH to asylum seekers is woefully inadequate. I don’t necessarily mean the government’s asylum seeker policies, although those policies are certainly fraught with all sorts of problems. What I mean is how we, as a society, approach the issue of asylum seekers. That approach is reflected in the public discourse on asylum seekers – or rather, the discourse on how to respond to their arrival. That discourse manifests itself not so much in what individual Australians think or say, as in the comparatively small number of positions that feature most prominently in public debate… Read the full article Photo: Detail from a photograph of a group of children in the Föhrenwald Displaced Persons’ Camp, Germany, established in 1945 and closed in 1957/ Yad Vashem Photo Archives 2922/