A/HRC/35/25/Add.3 (b) The Special Humanitarian Programme visa, for people outside their home country who are subject to substantial discrimination amounting to a gross violation of their human rights in their home country, and immediate family members of persons who have been granted protection in Australia. Applications for entry under the Special Humanitarian Programme must be supported by a proposer who is an Australian citizen or permanent resident or an eligible New Zealand citizen, or by an organization that is based in Australia. 28. People who arrived as unauthorized maritime arrivals on or after 13 August 2012 are no longer eligible to propose their family members under the Special Humanitarian Programme. People in those circumstances can apply under the family stream of the Migration Programme. 3. Relevant government agencies 29. Since 1 July 2015, the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service has been consolidated into the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. The Australian Border Force, a single front-line operational border agency, was established within the Department. The Australian Border Force draws together the operational border, investigations, compliance, detention and enforcement functions of the two previously separate agencies. Policy, regulatory and corporate functions are combined within the broader department. 30. The Operation Sovereign Borders Joint Agency Task Force (as part of Operation Sovereign Borders) was established to combat people-smuggling and to protect the country’s borders. 31. The Australian Human Rights Commission was established in 1986. The Commission examines complaints coming from regional processing centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea, but it cannot visit either country. In December 2014, the Commission released a report entitled “The forgotten children”, on children in onshore and offshore immigration detention. In March 2015, the Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection established the Child Protection Panel to provide independent advice on issues pertaining to the well-being and protection of children in immigration detention and in regional processing centres. In May 2016, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection received the panel’s final report and accepted all the recommendations in the report. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection will reconvene the panel in late 2017 to review the Department’s implementation of the panel’s recommendations. IV. Border management 32. The migration policies of Australia give many positive examples, such as the country’s resettlement programme, granting humanitarian protection to a high number of refugees with the objective of increasing the number of visas issued to 18,750 per year from 2018, and assisting them in their integration process with generous and well thoughtthrough integration programmes. The welcoming of 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees is also a positive contribution to the global response to refugee movements. The Special Rapporteur received information about the country’s huge temporary migration programme, which includes 300,000 students, 200,000 people on working holiday visas, and up to 150,000 visas for skilled temporary workers. He was informed that at any one time, there were approximately 2 million people in the country who held temporary visas. Many of these visas include pathways to permanent residence and citizenship. 33. In contrast to its exemplary resettlement policies, the strong focus on securitization and punishment blemishes the country’s good human rights record. The Special Rapporteur observed that some of the country’s migration policies have increasingly eroded the human rights of migrants, in contravention of its international human rights and humanitarian obligations. For all the progress made by Australia in all other areas of life, several of its migration policies and laws are regressive and fall behind international standards. 8

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