MSF warns of crisis as it is told to leave Nauru
Humanitarian group calls for immediate evacuation of all asylum seekers
Human rights groups have warned that a mental-health crisis on the Pacific island of Nauru is exploding as hundreds of asylum seekers stranded there lose hope of making it to their intended destination, Australia.
Despite those concerns, however, Nauruan authorities demanded that staff from Doctors Without Borders cease their operations on the island, the humanitarian group announced this week.
The group, which provided psychiatric and psychological assistance to both the local population and asylum seekers, said the decision would jeopardise the safety of many patients who relied on its doctors for urgent treatment. At least 78 people under the group’s care have contemplated suicide or “engaged in self-harm or attempted suicide”, Doctors Without Borders — which goes by its French initials, MSF, for Medecins Sans Frontieres — said in a statement.
In 2013, Australia began holding migrants and asylum seekers who try to reach the country by boat in offshore detention. About 900 asylum seekers are now on Nauru, some of whom have been there as long as five years. Many, including children, suffer from severe mental-health conditions, including depression and anxiety, doctors and human rights groups say.
In a telephone call with the
Washington Post yesterday, MSF humanitarian affairs adviser Aurelie Ponthieu said the demand for mentalhealth resources on Nauru was so high that the group had a waiting list of about 100 people seeking consultation.
Ponthieu said the local hospital lacked resources to care for large numbers of mentally ill people. And while some doctors are contracted by the Australian Government to treat patients there, she said, MSF is concerned that those “services are insufficient”. Asylum seekers “don’t trust anything provided by the Australian Government because the Government has put them there in the first place”, she said.
The group has provided support on Nauru since November last year. Australian Home Affairs Minister
We had children as young as 9 years old saying they want to die. We have seen adolescents suffering from resignation syndrome. Aurelie Ponthieu
Peter Dutton told the Guardian this week that MSF was “invited onto Nauru by their Government to provide medical services to local people in Nauru”, saying the group was “never contracted, as I’m advised, to provide medical support to transferees on Nauru”.
But Ponthieu called that claim “completely incorrect” and said MSF had a memorandum of understanding with the Nauruan Government that clearly stated it was to provide services to asylum seekers living there.
Asylum seekers stuck on Nauru arrived “with a certain amount of trauma”, Ponthieu said, referring to conflicts or human rights abuses they may have been exposed to in their home countries. Once on Nauru, some of them have been sexually and physically abused, she said.
Uncertainty and hopelessness also have set in among this group after years of hoping to reach Australia.
“In the last month, we’ve seen people deteriorating quite seriously,” she said.
“We had children as young as 9 years old saying they want to die. We have seen adolescents suffering from resignation syndrome.”
MSF has “called for the immediate evacuation of all asylum seekers and refugees from Nauru and an end to Australia’s offshore detention policy”.
The Australian Government could not be immediately reached for comment, but a spokesman for the Department of Home Affairs told the
Washington Post in an email last month that “Australia provides significant support to the Government of Nauru to provide welfare and health services, including mental health care, education and to support law and order”.
But MSF said the plight of families stranded on Nauru was only getting worse.
“I’ve talked to families who said they have to monitor children all the time so they don’t kill themselves,” Ponthieu said.
“It’s an awful situation. It’s one of the most dramatic situations I’ve seen in a migration context. It’s very heartbreaking.”