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[Music] well good evening everybody hi my name is Simon Longstaff I'm the executive director of the ethic center and I'd like to welcome all of you here Europe had been devastated made desolate by two world wars they've been the rise of the Nazis a Holocaust or Shoah and then the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe and what was once home became hostile territory so in 1951 an international agreement was made the Refugee Convention and tonight we're debating if that convention the Refugee Convention is out of date does it need to be refreshed replaced may be tossed out the convention defines a refugee as someone with a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of their race religion nationality member of a social group or political opinion what it excludes are people fleeing from modern-day threats like general instability warfare and violence poverty famine or natural disaster not only that you can only claim refugee status when you are physically in another country so that same rule that you can only claim it when you're in another country applies equally to those who are injured the elderly people who are impoverished and of course children so we've got two wonderful teams arguing for the proposition that the Refugee Convention is out of date and I'll introduce all three of them and then get you to welcome them is first of all dr. Anna barcha from the University of Sydney where she's senior lecturer specializing in migration population politics and human rights she's joined by Greg Sheridan who I don't think really needs much of an introduction he's a well-known journalist in intellectual in Australian public life who is foreign editor of the Australian and last but not least joining us from overseas is Lourdes fussa Toa who is a barrister nobleman and elected member of the Tongan Parliament please welcome the team to the affirmative speaking against the motion we have Erica feller former Assistant High Commissioner for protection at the UNHCR joined by Professor Jayne McCadden director of the University of New South Wales Andrew and Renata Caldor centre for international refugee law and then finally another person who probably needs no introduction paris aristotle director of the victorian foundations for survivors of torture please welcome all of the team for the negative begin a debate would you please welcome Anna Archer the first speaker for the affirmative the Refugee Convention arose from the horrors of the Holocaust and states guilt over their failure to protect the murder of European Jews now this fact alone does not mean it is ill-suited to the current day for we know that many international documents are flexible and malleable but tonight I will suggest to you that it is out of date and needs to be reformed and I'll give you three main reasons for this first the convention answers to narrowly the question of who is a refugee second the Convention does not answer the collective-action problem of who takes the refugees and finally the United Nations recent move towards a global compact on refugees is a tacit acknowledgement that the 1951 convention and its optional protocol do not cover the full story so to my first point who is a refugee Simon has set out the definition of a refugee and the Convention and it's connection to World War two and this was broadened in 1967 through the optional protocol yet the focused upon persecution as defined by the convention persists as does the need as Simon mentioned to be outside of one's country of nationality in order to apply for refugee status during the Cold War this focus on persecution was not that problematic because both sides in the Cold War could benefit from a focus on political persecution either in the West or the Soviet occupied countries but in the current day there is limited political point-scoring to be gained from accepting refugees the sources of humanitarian crisis extend beyond persecution to other forms of human rights violations famine socio-economic deprivation environmental displacement and eternal displacement in fact these are often the more for the more common forms of human rights violations in the current day and is unclear to me why they are less worthy of protection than those that fit the classic definition it is hard to stretch the convention to implicitly incorporate these categories it is difficult to draw a causal link between the phrase well-founded fear of persecution and socio-economic deprivation and this means the economic based human rights violations are often not covered not always but often not covered civil wars provide another example where the individual may be persecuted but may not have left their country of origin and therefore fit poorly into the existing definition climate change based displacement as my colleague Lord Pfister will argue in more detail is not adequately covered by the convention this is because such displacement may not be as a result of persecution by government and second it is often internal not international in its quality now the negative will argue that the convention is flexible there are workarounds for other areas of international law known as complimentary protection to accommodate these broader categories of refugees these are often observed in Europe sometimes in Australia the United States and Canada but this is there is less adherence in Africa and the Middle East and these are the major accepting regions Africa has its own convention but according to Oxford University's Alec Betts it is generally not followed in practice Jordan Pakistan Lebanon and Iran or major accepting nations are not even parties to the convention because they feel it does not meet the realities of displacement in their region and Turkey another major receiving nation places limits upon its scope of course we can and should aim to distribute more equitably refugees my next point but in the interim it is important that in the regions where these refugees are placed that they enjoy sufficient protection and while the track record in some of these countries is very good in others it is very poor with documented persecution deportation and rights violations of individuals seeking protection who takes the refugees lack of responsibility or burden sharing mechanisms as it is called in the current Convention is the core issue in my view in contemporary political debates around refugee issues the Syrian refugee crisis was in many ways a European crisis between leaders like Sweden and Germany and laggards such as the Czech Republic and Hungary the convention protects those with a well-founded fear of persecution from return by the principle of non-refoulement but this principle itself is insufficient to address the question of who takes the refugees it does not tackle the obvious point that in most countries demand for refugee status heavily outweighs available spots boat turn backs walls Europe's frontex temporary protection visas processing refugees is a class rather than individual cases detention denial of family reunification offshore processing halting processing all together through presidential executive orders in my view these are all ways to engage in raw form on with our calling a true form on and the reason that nation states including democracies like our own do this in part is because there is currently no mechanism to manage fairly and adequately this highly politicized collective action problem certainly Europe has aimed at this internally but the reality is a global means to allocate refugees has failed to evolve from the current Convention and this is what is needed we've clearer guidelines to governments about how refugee flows ought to be distributed countries would be less like to engage in these destructive dangerous demonizing and costly practices of course this does not mean that violations would not occur nor that we would not need mechanisms to deal with extraordinary events but the basic issue of distribution would at least be partially addressed in a legally binding document my final point the Global Compact this relates the UN Global Compact on refugees a new initiative over the next few years to provide more coherence in the area including around this so-called burden sharing issue the UN makes clear that the compact will not be a legally binding document even though it may reflect binding rules of international law but alternatively this could be the basis for future developments of a reformed convention with new rules about refugee allocation the Global Compact processes clearly illustrate why the convention requires modification it makes clear that the comp the convention is an imperfect document the guidelines would be best enshrined in a revisited convention that addresses the central issue of burden sharing so in summation a new approach to refugees is needed because the current convention is too narrow in its definition the allocation of responsibility goes unaddressed and the Global Compact acknowledges the need for steps in this direction it won't be easy but the current system is clearly crumbling under the weight of growing flows in increasing crises we should not do away with an international agreement altogether in my view it is precisely the failure to address the collective action problem that contributes to the current politics around humanitarian migration we as global citizens must address this issue heads on if we do not do it now we will be forced to when the next refugee crisis hits thank you I think it's about time that we had some discussion that would clear the air of obfuscation and misinformation some of it deliberate about the utility and the applicability of the 1951 convention I've worked with that convention for over 30 years now and it's that long-term experience both working with refugees and working with the convention that is leading me to make the following points I have two main points I want to develop the first is suggesting that the terms of the convention have outlived their relevance is in my view not seriously arguable those who do attempt to have either not read it or at least beyond article one they haven't read it which is the definition article or they haven't understood it my second point is that the Convention has a political significance which goes well beyond its specific terms it's a working instrument whose proper application can be a win-win situation for all concerned obviously refugees but governments as well now to the first point the enduring relevance of the convention the refugee problem is about rights it's about responsibilities it's about vulnerabilities it's about rights that have been violated about specific vulnerabilities which very directly linked to that and about vulnerabilities which need to be protected the classic refugee we've heard the refugee definition I won't repeat it there are still very many of these classic refugees around but a refugee is also someone whose life is impossibly precarious because of discriminate or indiscriminate violence discriminate violence falls squarely within the Refugee Convention definition now the convention was a landmark treaty it was intended to address the particular circumstances of being a refugee the drafters did so by putting in place a framework of directly relevant rights and responsibilities including the right not to be returned to persecution the requirement that refugees not be penalize solely for having entered in Asylum country illegally as long as they move on to regularize their status and then it contains in the body of the text articulated conditions of stay necessary to ensure firstly the basics for survival and then secondly at a later point minimum possibilities to sustain oneself I cannot understand how it can be argued that such life-saving protections are outdated an argument one hears of course is that the convention is inflexible it's a mismatch with today's political and strategic realities these are false or misguided arguments in my experience and in fact they've they've been repeatedly reaffirmed as false by courts around the world the conventions framers were diplomats diplomats who were charged to safeguard their governments various interests and they were acutely aware of how far to go with this convention it's significant that the Convention does not require any particular state to accept long term responsibility for any particular individual protection against reform art is not the same thing as an obligation to provide the durable solution in sissu the convention allows reservations to its terms as do most international legal conventions rights and responsibilities are set out with carriers with limits many for example oblige a state to do no more than provide arrangements similar to those in place for other comparable foreigners not Nationals but foreigners refugees are required are required to abide by the laws of their host country the convention is not as one often hears as well as safe haven for criminals or for terrorists it excludes from its protections persons who have committed crimes against humanity and other particular serious crimes of various sorts national security or public order are expressly provided for as reasons a state does not have to play with certain prohibitions including when it comes to expulsion or to Reforma in short the convention is not a straightjacket nor is it a blueprint but rather it is a broad framework the problem and I have to emphasize this very strongly the problem is less the text and more the choices governments make as to how or not to implement it an international convention needs to be implemented with flexibility true to its purposes it should not be used and found wanting for purposes it was never intended for for example a convention was not drafted as a migration control instrument and shouldn't be held to account for alleged failures on this score neither was it intended to be used more broadly as a migration protection convention it was about refugees and a central point here and this comes from many long experience with sitting on drafting committees in Geneva and elsewhere trying substantively to read out this convention to make it embrace for example broader responsibilities on governments other categories of non refugees is doomed to failure in today's world there is no appetite at the current time among states for a new legally binding international rights convention the danger of embarking on a radical redrafting is that this convention would be unraveled but nothing of comprable value and utility would be agreed to replace it this would be a major loss now I said that the convention has a importance going beyond its words it does it's predicated on international cooperation and it's served for decades as the basis for rallying that cooperation this became patently clear to me when I worked in Asia during the Indo Chinese refugee crisis when in a region where very few states a party that - that convention that convention became the basis in the 80s and the 90s to build the solution which eventually brought an end to that that crisis now the convention is also particularly valuable for UNHCR urine HCI uses it every day it's an important legal underpinning for UNHCR s activities article 35 specifically mentions UNHCR and call states to cooperate with the agency it's also the basis for all of you and HCR status determination activities for its resettlement activities for countries like Australia as well refugee emergencies of course don't respect state borders many governments find the convention a strategic and politically valuable advocacy tool having a common set of understandings about state responsibilities to refugees helps to reduce the tensions of acting on them and in situations where a state is under pressure from a neighboring state not to let in refugees being party to the convention enables it to explain its actions as a humanitarian act required by a treaty it diffuses now in conclusion I want to be very clear I have long argued the convention is not perfect and would benefit from buttressing through new understandings on issues like burden sharing I also see the merit of and indeed have worked on setting standards when it comes to persons displaced by climate I just want to conclude by saying that all of this is already in train looking at how to buttress the convention but not to replace it to build upon it leaving its basics intact and this was agreed at this at this conference that was mentioned by Anna in New York and that is the states there even while they're embarking on this new process said at the same time it is fundamentally important to continue to adhere to the existing architecture thank you I'm going to use my seven minutes or so to talk to you more about refugees then about the Refugee Convention I do agree however with the proposition that I'm enlisted to defend that the Refugee Convention is out of date but in my view it has never been very important one way or the other has never played a significant role in Australia it doesn't do any good doesn't do any harm I wouldn't spend any effort to get rid of it but I wouldn't spend any effort to sustain it either refugees on the other hand have been critically important to Australia and in my own life personally but until the controversies of the Abbott and Howard government's I don't think I ever gave a thought to the Refugee Convention yet in the mid-1970s refugees were certainly the center of my life two things moved refugees into my consciousness the first is while I would urge you never ever to judge the poor old Catholic Church by a terrible person like me nonetheless I take the Christian heritage seriously and I reflect on the fact that the Holy Family were refugees that is something that rests on my consciousness now for my sins I was a very strong supporter of Australia's involvement in Vietnam and the Vietnam War and when Saigon fell in 1975 it was abundantly obvious to me that we had an overwhelming national obligation to help these people these were our allies we'd made promises to them written in blood we'd fought and died with them they'd fought and died with us friends are friends even when they are dead in the whole world is against them so it was just abundantly obvious to me that Australia needed to take in large numbers of Vietnamese so that was the consuming campaign of my life in the mid 70s it's what led me into political activism and journalism wonderful irony of that moment in our history this was the first time a jhin's came to Australia as an act of policy by our national government in large numbers they broke down the whitest ray policy now Malcolm Fraser like John Howard later on wandered above all to avoid the arrival of boats and unauthorized boats on the Australian shore and he also had a group of people in Australia pressuring him to do something about refugees and above all he had the United States which felt the same sense of combat solidarity that I felt towards the Vietnamese pushing him into a solution so as a result we took a very large number of Vietnamese lotions and Cambodians they've been wonderful migrants in Australia now the reason this is relevant to this debate about the refugee convention is that it illustrates my central thesis which is it is the National Australian debate and the working out of our normal Democratic domestic political debate which will determine what we do about refugees I think the convention plays very little role for good or for ill in Australia it is outdated but as I say I wouldn't necessarily throw it out I don't want it determining anything in Australian law I don't want the UNHCR to have any role in Australian law I would always trust the Australian Parliament the Australian people in the Australian democracy to reflect infinitely better values than I would ever trust a corrupt worthless wicked body like the United Nations and let me tell you as a simple matter of political observation if there is ever an argument in Australian life which says here is Australia's national interest on one side and there is the United Nations on the other side I know which side of that argument is going to win and it's not going to be the United Nations ever not once ever now without politicizing this this this matter in any way let me let me refer for a second to the period just before when we took the Vietnamese refugees namely the Whitlam government no government in our history was more dedicated to signing up to international instruments or valued the United Nations more highly or was more committed to humane decent values in the field of immigration was the father of the or the mother or whatever of multiculturalism and so forth founded multiculturalism as a policy and in the last year of the Whitlam government more people left Australia than arrived in Australia we had net emigration not emigration so the net consequence of the failure of an Australian national project economic management and economic development meant that we could do nothing for new immigrants and nothing for refugees let me cite one other example quickly I have certainly always believed that we need to be generous in sharing the bounty of Australia that we have one life's lottery through no virtue of our own by being born in Australia so I'm a biggest rally man I want lots and lots of immigrants and lots and lots of refugees but I want our government to choose them now I can't relitigate the period of the Howard government in the minute and 35 seconds that I have left but let me just describe the sequence Howard regained effective Australian government control of our borders nothing that he did and nothing that the subsequent governments did contradicted the Refugee Convention under which you can do almost anything nobody who ever talks about the convention ever reads the convention it's actual requirements are very very few but in any event it wouldn't have mattered if it did if they did contradict the convention because they would have just changed Australian more he regained control of our borders and as a result of that the public regained faith in our immigration program and as a result of that our immigration program under Howard went up to its historic height never before or never since matched at the same time we took in more refugees in a completely orderly fashion and the simple fact is that many many more refugees came into Australia under Howard than came under Fraser or under Whitlam or under Hawke or under Keating even though those Prime Minister's are all regarded as heroes in this field and Howard is always regarded as a villain now I use that example simply to make my point if we want to help refugees and I believe we should if we want to help human beings and I believe we should if we want to welcome large numbers into Australia and I am an immigration extremist I want the largest amount of Australians possible I want more Australians a lot of people in the world think there should be fewer and better Australians I want lots more Australians but if we want to do that and we want to include in that a significant humanitarian strand which includes refugees family reunion and all the rest we have to win the specific argument within our own political culture there is no shortcut through international instruments or through citing the United Nations or through citing the United Nations Refugee Convention thank you [Applause] critics of the Refugee Convention tend to fall into two camps in one camp are those who think that the treaty is too old and too narrow to respond to the displacement challenges of the 21st century in the other camp are those who think the treaty is too broad and too generous somehow to blame for the large numbers of refugees we see around the world today but the fact is that without the Refugee Convention the international protection regime would lose one of its key regulating components and I'd never met an immigration official who thinks that scrapping the Refugee Convention would create a more orderly system of movement as our first speaker made clear the Refugee Convention remains the most comprehensive statement we have of the rights and obligations of refugees it doesn't provide a blank check but carefully balances the needs of refugees and of governments it also contains exclusion clauses to keep out people who are suspected of committing very serious crimes such as murder or terrorism indeed the drafters of the Refugee Convention were well aware that refugee protection was certainly not a way to bypass migration controls to the contrary refugee status determination exposes people to the most extreme vetting possible it's the last route that I would choose if I had something to hide although drafted in the 1950s the Refugee Convention definition of a refugee has proven itself to be capable of a dynamic interpretation over time for instance while the drafters never envisaged gender-based persecution as a ground for refugee status the rules of treaty interpretation have allowed the convention to adapt and reflect modern human rights standards likewise the convention does protect or displaced by armed conflict people who are persecuted for socio-economic reasons people who face generalized violence the Refugee Convention does not exist in a vacuum whereas the convention precludes governments from sending people back to a place where they have a well-founded fear of persecution known as the principle of non reform on human rights treaties now extend that further so governments now are also prevented from returning people to places where they face a real risk of being tortured or a real risk of cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment arbitrary deprivation of life a flagrant denial of the right to a fair trial or a flagrant denial of the right to liberty and security of the person in fact this principle of non-refoulement is now considered so fundamental that it's become part of what we call customary international law which means it binds every country including those that haven't signed up to the Refugee Convention so even if Australia took were to withdraw from the Refugee Convention it would nonetheless remain bound by this core requirement not to send people back to harm now to be fair the Refugee Convention doesn't protect every displaced person in the world but nor was it ever designed to do so for instance it doesn't extend to the millions of people who are displaced within their own countries although it certainly has provided a model that's been adapted to assist them most recently the plight of people displaced by the impacts of disasters and climate change have been singled out as another so-called unprotected group and perhaps unsurprisingly many have left to the assumption that we need to extend the Refugee Convention to these people and I imagine that is what the third speaker of the affirmative is going to say but there are a number of reasons why this assumption is flawed first as acknowledged by their first speaker the majority of disaster or climate change displacement will occur within countries not across international borders so the Refugee Convention would not apply anyway secondly a lot of disaster or climate change-related movement will be gradual as conditions deteriorate over time rather than in the nature of flight thirdly the impacts of climate change in disasters don't cause movement on their own rather they're the straw that breaks the camel's back they overlay existing drivers of movement like conflict human rights abuses poverty and so on this causal complexity would be difficult to reflect in a treaty definition fourthly again as the first speaker indicated why should protection be extended to people affected by climate change or by disasters rather than by abject poverty for instance which may be equally attributable to global structural in inequities as experts have noted focusing on a single cause can distort and oversimplify the context and impede the identification of appropriate solutions fifthly there is no political appetite to expand the Refugee Convention and in fact opening it up for renegotiation would most likely result in a far weaker framework with less protection for everybody including refugees who are currently protected by it sixthly and very importantly a treaty must be implemented and enforced to have any meaning in practice 148 countries are bound by the terms of the Refugee Convention and yet today we have more refugees in the world than at any time since the Second World War the problem ladies and gentlemen is not an absence of law but an absence of political will to implement the law so that's why we need to think more creatively about reactives responses to displacement linked to the impacts of climate change in disasters governments could do so much right now to help people they could implement disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation measures to build resilience over time avert displacement they could enhance voluntary migration opportunities like labour mobility schemes to help people move before the situation becomes intolerable they could develop humanitarian visas when people can't return home and as a last resort planned relocations of communities could be considered so when returning to the objections leveled at the Refugee Convention we need to be cautious about misdiagnosis and reaching for the treaty equivalent of euthanasia many of the alleged deficiencies of the convention are misplaced and to suggest that the problems we see today are its fault is simply to misapprehend the conventions origins and its purpose we'll try and establish the reality of what goes on in the on the ground particularly when it comes to climate change and its effect on refugees so the latest figures with respect to the impacts of climate change is such that ninety seven point zero seven percent of planetary climate change impacts are caused by the OECD nations so Australia New Zealand Europe the US these are the people that provide the emissions 0.03 percent of the planet suffer their consequences which are the people that I'm from the brown skins ocean paradise which is called the Pacific and that's not that you know they're the the relevance of that is that the convention needs to make provision for that okay if you're a conflict refugee you get legal socio-economic rights if you're a political persecution refugee you get legal socio-economic rights if you're in your house in Kiribati Tuvalu and the ocean is coming into your living room and you've got no else to live because all these emissions have put your house and water you get no rights whatsoever so I was asked by a colleague of mine her name's baroness scotland she's the current Secretary General of the Commonwealth she was the former attorney general under Tony Blair in the UK to attend the UN General Assembly last and speak particularly on this we had the Ambassador from Kenya who spoke on conflict refugees we had the Ambassador from Bangladesh who spoke on persecution refugees and we had the Monsignor from the Vatican who spoke on human trafficking refugees in the the reason they asked me to turn up was to speak on climate induced raishin so what's climate-induced migration climate-induced migration is when the impacts of climate change are such that you can no longer live in your country of nationality you either have to move internally because of coastal erosion you'll have to move inland because of the intensity and higher frequency of natural disasters you'll have to migrate inland well you will have to leave abroad as most theme colleagues have said this a labor mobility scheme there are RSA schemes throughout New Zealand and Australia where our people are sent as slave labour to the OECD countries to work picking fruit to try and send a living back home and there's nothing wrong with that it's a ten billion dollar industry over the next decade and what we have to do is try and manage that in a manner which will be productive for both the host country and us the point I raised that is the reason I think that UN conventions should be amended is because it's not going to be a silver bullet it's not going to be a magic bullet but it has to provide a safeguard for the peoples of the blue Pacific who have contributed immeasurably to Australia New Zealand every metropolitan country in our region and it can be done in a manner which is equitable and provides a benefit to both countries I've had colleagues from the continental North say ok if you change the UN Convention this is what's going to happen to us in Western Europe Kenya is going to decide that we have a drought for one week and they're going to call it climate change and then it'll send 20 million people into Western Europe and it's going to completely ruin our economy so I take these criticisms to heart there are there are ways of delivering the wording there are ways of addressing both the Pacific and the Caribbean of the two major areas of concern because these are the two major areas on the planet who were affected by climate change I take to heart all the well thought out and we'll put points by my colleagues my colleague Jane macadam has said very learnedly and and very rightly that there are workarounds but these are workarounds which are neither bilaterally multilaterally nor internationally in a manner of establishing a new jurisprudence which is what Baroness Scotland library - and we put from the Commonwealth to the UN there needs to be a new jurisprudence that establishes the rights of climate refugees takes them to heart and ensures that these implemented on an on a domestic original international bilateral level right across the board because that is the only way that you are going to address the concerns as I said at the UN General Assembly last year there was one major concern Obama came in we even had Andreya Bocelli coming in to sing about climate change okay and to all these people this is ephemeral these these these are conversations that they have over intellectual lunches in Manhattan that no no no no no for us this is when people in Kiribati Tuvalu sit there and the ocean comes in to their living room this is a tangible concern for us and one that needs to be addressed I apologize if I've been a little bit too aggressive but these are major concerns for our people and I appreciate your time I thank you so much [Applause] as my two colleagues have so eloquently pointed out the Refugee Convention is not outdated in many respects that's a tragedy the convention is needed in more places and for more people around the world today than ever before and it is needed for precisely the reasons it was created it provides a framework upon which the international community can achieve some semblance of an ordered response to massive human displacement caused by the brutal violence groups are inflicting upon each other in all too many places it's a framework that has continued to be relevant to the thousands of clients from my own organization the Victorian Foundation for survivors of torture over many years for example in 1990 the convention was relevant to an El Salvadoran couple with whom I worked in El Salvador they'd been dragged from their house by the military which was then set on fire their two-year-old son was still inside I'll never forget her words she looked up at me her eyes brimming with tears and said I can still hear him crying I heard him cry to the very end the challenge we face today is not with the relevance of the convention but the failure of governments to honor the conventions goals and comply with the commitments that they signed up to to meet the challenge we ought not to distract from our failings and lack of commitment by focusing on or blaming the convention itself instead we must focus on strengthening the International architecture of the convention globally regionally and nationally in particular I advocate reinforcing regional arrangements international bodies States and civil society should work collaboratively to improve regional arrangements in ways that hence the protection of vulnerable people from immediate threats guarantee fair determination of their status enables them to properly sustain themselves and their families and increases more timely durable solutions for their futures the key word here is collaboratively some believe we should abandon the convention altogether and that we're better off not having to comply with its obligations others believe that we should withdraw and act independently to assist when when we can and on our own terms however unilateral withdrawal from the convention would weaken Australia's influence with other states globally or regionally and diminish our capacity to contribute to international responses towards human rights crisis as well as both to long-standing and newly emerging challenges but most importantly unilateral withdrawal would leave us hoping that successive governments would act credibly and with integrity in response to future crises and Refugee situations more generally I'm not convinced that such hope would be well rewarded there are millions of people other than refugees on our planet enduring profound present and imminent threats extreme poverty the destruction of their homes and livelihoods by rising seas or expanding deserts but I do not believe that the most effective means of addressing their plight is to open the convention to a major redraft so as to incorporate them within a broad comprehensive humanitarian treaty consider the operational complexity of layering every human displacement challenge into one convention and imagine achieving agreement on its definition and implementation I believe advocating such an approach is a siren song for almost 30 years I've been privileged to work at Foundation House assisting refugees and in particular those who survived torture and other brutal acts we've worked with many thousands of people from more than 90 countries spanning every continent for us and for all of the people with whom we work the convention is not defunct it lives the great majority of our clients were recognized as refugees under the convention the recognition and status was that recognition and status was the basis upon which UNHCR could refer them for resettlement to Australia and the opportunity to rebuild their life in safety and with dignity again in 2005 the convention continued to be relevant to another client Rosa she suffered constant persecution imprisonment and brutal torture at the hands of her government simply because of her faith our return to us with Rosa shortly with respect to our clients who sought protection after having arrived in Australia we were without a valid visa by plane or by boat over the past 30 years they were also assessed against the Cottrell criteria that the Refugee Convention they were not granted their protection randomly successes successive governments have stringently utilized the Convention to guide its decision and thereby satisfy their international obligations in 2011 Hasan was one such person as a teenage boy he witnessed his father being publicly tortured and murdered by the Taliban Hasan was subsequently detained and tortured repeatedly over several months upon his release he fled Afghanistan and eventually traveled to Australia in search of protection the process was difficult and he required months of mental health care and medical treatment for the injuries he sustained it was in accordance with the convention the Refugee Convention that Australians determined that her son warranted protection I'd like to conclude the case for why the convention remains entirely fit for purpose through the words of Rosa she said many brutal things happened during my incarceration they said they would do something that I would always remember them by and they did I was given the status of a refugee of refugee by the UNHCR and I was lucky enough to be resettled in Australia I did not think I could start a new life because of my memories they would surface in my dreams and I would wake up crying but through the protection and the support I received I have now learned to trust again to become stronger to reduce my depression and my sadness I am rebuilding my life the convention is not outdated it lives and it saves lives we just desperately need to do more and better thank you so as you know we do a pre debate poll we do it in order to see how much the argument you've heard shifts your thinking over the course of the debate I'm just gonna read to you where we stood before we heard any of that now it's pretty evenly split actually against the motion 21% for the motion 35% but 44% undecided so the genuine opportunity for this debate to to shift people's thinking microphone for really brief if you could the reason that I was undecided because I agree both with the idea for that there's very little model distinction between dying or fleeing from climate change or economic poverty but I also agree with the against point that it's practically very difficult in the current political climate to renegotiate a tree I was wondering if we can get to engagement from both sides of the debate on the other side's argument so from against Weber aren't you agree there is a moral distinction between fleeing political or religious violence and fleeing climate change to a poverty and from the foresight weather are you agree that it's practically very difficult it's pause thank you okay well let's let's do that so let's start with you I mean surely as Lord faucet or put it you know if you're sitting there and the seas are coming in and your life is going to be destroyed why shouldn't you be covered and setting aside the practical difficulties for me is there a moral distinction to be made between that and the deliberate decision to persecute who wants to speak Jane thank you yeah I mean I've done a lot of work on this and I absolutely believe that people who are being impacted by disasters and climate change need protection or they conceive but the Refugee Convention operates largely as a remedial instrument so you've been displaced you're a now in another country and you're saying please don't send me back in these are the reasons why what virtually every community that has been consulted on this around the world says including in the Pacific is please don't call us climate refugees we want to be seen as people who can migrate with dignity to other countries bring our skills create new opportunities and have proactive measures put in place so we can choose if and when we move not have to wait until the situation becomes absolutely dire and then on a more individual basis have to to seek asylum and in fact the secondary point there is that human rights law already protects people against return to arbitrary deprivation of life or to cruel and inhuman treatment and it could well be that circumstances and such that you don't have a safe place to live you can't grow crops there's no fridge so John just nuclei are you saying there that there is a moral distinction between fear of persecution and the clarity and that that's there are conceptual differences between the choake I'm talking a moral difference thank you do you want to yeah very briefly I don't I don't think there's a moral difference right I think if people's lives are at risk if they are experience terrible suffering then there is an equal moral obligation on the international community to meet their concerns and do something take action to do something about that so let's go now to Anna that's the practical challenge here that yes even if there is a distinction you're going to blow up the one thing that's working by trying to expand it exponentially to recover all these things I mean I don't think it should be blown up I think it needs to be do you think those a will blow up well the UN is moving towards a global compact which is a tacit acknowledgment that the convention needs to take on these burden sharing issues and a resolution was passed in the General Assembly acknowledging that fact so there was agreement at least on that point the problem I have with the compact is there won't be legally binding so I won't develop a full solution to this issue so I think that currently some of the failures around negotiation have been because they have only been regionally based whether that be the agreement in the Turkish European agreement or here in the Asia Pacific and I think if you think about the burden sharing issue it has to be a global response otherwise there will be sort of quarantined regions around the world with different standards applying microphone 3 notice I got a microphone sorry and we'll come back and wrap it up yep thank you my name is Jim and I was undecided and now I'm decidedly for the proposition and through the presentations I've found myself asking why does this actually exist in the most compelling eye argument I heard was that it's about protecting and preserving dignity and human bonds so the fact that it works for some people isn't an argument that it shouldn't be reformed and the fact that there is a political appetite isn't an argument that it shouldn't be reformed and I think of several compelling cases of gay lesbian and transgender people who have been stranded or even returned to places where they will be persecuted tortured and murdered that I think absolutely it absolutely needs to be updated thank you I have to ask you to finish there so Erica you ordered the next thing thank you I want to come back on something that Ana said but it actually relates also to that twist excellent there's been mention of a meeting which took place in New York in 2016 September that meeting involved a hundred and ninety three heads of state or ministers of government from 193 country members of the UN that meeting agreed that there was a need to bat for us the 1951 convention and not only that convention also understandings and agreements in relation to migrants by developing two new global compacts not binding because states are absolutely no interest at all in developing more legally binding instruments they're more interested in restricting their legal obligations but they agreed on these global contexts but the most important thing that I want to say here is that in a green they adopted a declaration where at the head of state a hundred and ninety three states said it is fundamentally important to continue to implement properly the protection architecture the 1951 convention as it exists even while we work to develop new understandings for the good moral reasons and reasons of necessity put by the other side to address some of the new imperatives that very vulnerable people are facing today and just on that last point about adding to the the convention is outdated and one of the examples that was given by the speaker was LGBTI community and the extent to which they are currently covered by the existing instrument I want to say very clearly that people who are persecuted or seriously discriminated against because they belong to one or others of the LGBTI community are covered by the convention do benefit from refugee status and its fact it's the base of the convention is the basis on which they are put forward for resettlement to settlement to two countries and this because I think up James about it being a living instrument okay bill twisted to how do you feel about being offered as kind of a second-class protection Erica the only declaration that that was outweighed by was the climate change declaration that even more of us because I was there at the UN GA in September and our head of state wasn't there who is their majesty so I was there with their time delegation and the only Declaration which outweighed the UN refugees conventions was the one on climate change because that was the one that had absolutely unanimous support from every single member nation on the UN General Assembly floor so that's all I would add to that okay so I'll remind you how things were before we got underway forty-four percent undecided twenty-one percent against and thirty five percent for no G no it's pretty it's pretty big well the underside of have dropped down to 10 percent and I haven't got good news for you Anna okay because for the proposition is now 19 percent meaning that 71 percent voted with the against I've told you the things let's think again fabulous peak is blowing through the drop Greg Sheridan Erica telegenic Adam and Harris Aristotle i'm sanna long truck the ethic said goodbye to me and everyone here at IQ tea [Music] [Music]