Pacific / Nauru

Human Rights Watch calls on Aust to accept Nauru-based refugees.

20:09 pm on 19 October 2015

The deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division says Australia should accept all refugees in Nauru onto its shores.

The Australian-run detention programme on Nauru has come under fire after reports of mistreatment of refugees both in and outside the camp and a continuing media blackout.

Human Rights Watch's Phil Robertson. Photo: Human Rights Watch

Phil Robertson says housing asylum-seekers and refugees on Nauru was never going to work and it needs to end.

Mr Robertson says third-party resettlement deals with countries like Nauru and Cambodia are ridiculous.

"As a ratifying state of the refugee convention it has obligations and this whole idea of somehow paying poorer countries to take on Australia's refugee burden is both shameful and outrageous and I think it needs to end."