Adelaide book launch: Seeking Asylum Alone: Australia.

9 November 2006

Book launch: Seeking Asylum Alone: Australia. A study of Australian law, policy and practice regarding unaccompanied and separated children by Dr Mary Crock (Assoc. Prof of Law, The University of Sydney)

To be launched by: Eva Sallis (writer and human rights activist)

MC: Stephen Watkins (ABC broadcaster)

Time: 6 for 6.30pm, Thursday 9 November

Venue: Migration Museum courtyard, 82 Kintore Avenue, Adelaide


Seeking Asylum Alone is the first report in Australia to comprehensively examine the experiences of unaccompanied child refugees in Australia.

The report highlights the adverse impacts that Australia's asylum-seeker policies have on children, some of whom have been imprisoned for more than three years in immigration detention centres both in Australia and in Nauru as part of the so-called "Pacific Solution".

The report is part of an international series documenting the treatment of refugee children in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Evidence presented in the report demonstrates that asylum-seeking children should never be detained, deflected to offshore processing centres or returned to persecution, but rather provided with access to appropriate legal, welfare and health services.

While children are no longer formally detained in immigration detention facilities in Australia, concerns remain that Australia's interception, interdiction, offshore warehousing and protection application policies have the potential to continue to cause irreparable harm to vulnerable refugee children.