Refugee Rights and Policy Wrongs: A frank, up-to-date guide by experts

Everyone has the right to seek asylum under international law. However, successive governments in Australia have declared the need to ‘stop the boats’ whatever the cost, be it human, economic, moral or legal. In this new book, Jane McAdam and Fiona Chong find that Australia’s policies towards refugees have hardened since their bestsellingRefugees: Why seeking asylum is legal and Australia’s policies are notwas published in 2014. Now,Refugee Rights and Policy Wrongs provides a wholly updated account of Australian refugee law and policy. Bringing facts to bear on a highly politicised debate, McAdam and Chong explain why Australia falls short of its own international commitments when it comes to policies on offshore processing, detention and boat turnbacks, among others. This up-to-date account of Australia’s refugee laws and policies could not come at a more crucial time and is compelling reading for anyone seeking to understand the human impacts of Australia’s practices.

Fiona Chong is a lawyer and was recently a Human Rights Fellow in the Master of Laws program at Columbia University. Jane McAdam is Scientia Professor of Law and Director of the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales. Professor McAdam publishes widely in international refugee law and forced migration and is editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Refugee Law, the leading journal in the field. She was honoured as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in 2013 and in 2017 she was awarded the prestigious international Calouste Gulbenkian Prize for Human Rights, becoming the first Australian recipient of the award. She will be a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in 2019 and at NYU in 2020.