Asylum situation ‘beyond desperate’

MÉDECINS Sans Frontières (MSF) has pulled its mental health workers off Nauru on government orders, the medical charity said yesterday, calling the situation of asylum seekers and refugees on the Pacific island “beyond desperate”.

Nauru is a tiny island country in Micronesia, north-east of Australia.

MSF said international staff had left Nauru, where it was providing mental health care to locals, refugees and those seeking asylum. Australia sends people trying to reach its shores to an offshore processing centre there.

“MSF is deeply concerned for the health and well-being of its patients and describes the mental health situation of asylum seekers and refugees on the island as ‘beyond desperate’,” it said.

A spokesperson for MSF told the Thomson Reuters Foundation earlier that the charity was negotiating with Nauru officials. The Nauru president’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Around 900 people, including an estimated 95 children, are on Nauru, the Refugee Council of Australia said. It said experts had described them as “some of the most traumatised people they have ever seen”.

“Children as young as 7 and 12 are now experiencing repeated incidents of suicide attempts and dousing themselves in petrol,” the advocacy group said.

Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said at the National Press Club of Australia that MSF had been contracted to provide services to locals, not to refugees and asylum seekers.

But MSF said this year it was providing support to anyone on the island and training locals to treat psychological and psychiatric disorders. | Thomson Reuters Foundation | Reuters