| Protect welbeing of Tamil Refugees in Sri Lanka - Tamil Australians request Minister for Immigration |
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 Australian Tamils Forum (ATF) in Queensland - an informal and active Federation of Tamil Organisations in Australia, responded to Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs request to submit ideas/proposal on Australia’s 2007-08 Humanitarian Programme. ATF stressed the need for the protection and wellbeing of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), mainly Tamils, who are victims of Sri Lankan Stare atrocities and asked Australian Government to increase the consideration. Tamil Australian's welcomed the initiative of ATF to represent them at State level and briefing the Government of the pathetic state of tamils in Sri Lanka.
Full Text of the submission follows;
Australian Tamils Forum (ATF) thanks the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs for the opportunity to comment on the 2007-08 Humanitarian Programme. ATF welcomes Australia’s Humanitarian Programme for the Year 2007-08 and for its size and composition. The Australian government, through its Humanitarian Programme, has demonstrated strong leadership in meeting its obligations under various international conventions. In particular, supporting its humanitarian programme through $2 billion funding over a four-year budget cycle is particularly distinctive and applaudable. The fact that Australia shares the responsibility for refugee protection with the international community beyond any international obligations and always ranked within top three in resettlement program makes us proud Australians. The issue of main concern for ATF relates to the protection and wellbeing of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Therefore this submission purely concentrates IDPs and deliberately avoids comments on other aspects of the government’s humanitarian programme. The main thrust of our submission is to highlight the need to expand the current humanitarian programme to include the protection of IDPs in conflict areas as an integral part of Australia’s offshore assistance programme component. The issues of IDPs are of particular concern for our community due to the ongoing crisis in Sri Lanka. However our submission applies all IDPs who face the similar hardship as our community. For the purpose of this submission we will use the definition of IDP as applied by the panel of experts who prepared the “Guiding Principles on Internal displacement” submitted to the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1998. The Guiding Principles define IDPs as “persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border”. This description of an internally displaced person highlights two elements: (1) the coercive or otherwise involuntary character of that person’s movement, and (2) the fact that such movement takes place within national borders. Even though most displacement occurs during armed conflict, the Guiding Principles thus cover other situations too (Walter Kälin - RICR September IRRC September 2001 Vol. 83 No 843). Numerous civil society actors, authors and experts from around the world have expressed profound concern at the continuing tendency to interpret the 1951 Refugee Convention too narrowly in the case of persons fleeing from areas of conflict. Indeed at present millions of IDPs around the world are in dire need of protection but they rarely receive the necessary support to start a new life. Who should help them? By definition, IDPs stay within the borders of their own country. They remain citizens. Under international law, it is therefore first and foremost the responsibility of their government to protect and assist them. However within last two decades we have seen again and again the failure by the governments be it in Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, former Yugoslavia and in fact in our country of origin Sri Lanka where states have deliberately contributed to the misery of IDPs. Governments were considered to have the exclusive responsibility of providing for the wellbeing and security of their citizens. When they failed to do so or deliberately subjected their populations to forced displacement, starvation, mass killings and other serious abuses, the international community basically stood by. There is now a greater acceptance of the idea that events taking place within a country are a legitimate concern of the international community. This view had long been championed by the human rights movement, which insisted that governments should be held accountable when they failed to meet their obligations under the UN Charter and international human rights agreements. Humanitarian organizations also began to insist that when access was denied to populations in need of food and medicines, the international community should find ways to become involved. |
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