FactCheck: Does Australia take more refugees per capita through the UNHCR than any other country?

Kenny, M.A.ORCID: 0000-0002-5352-7549 and Davis, S. (2015) FactCheck: Does Australia take more refugees per capita through the UNHCR than any other country? The Conversation, 8 September 2015 .

Abstract

"We are a country which, on a per capita basis, takes more refugees than any other. We take more refugees than any other through the UNHCR on a per capita basis, but obviously this is a very grave situation in the Middle East. – Prime Minister Tony Abbott, press conference, September 6, 2015.
The first part of the prime minister’s statement that “we are a country which, on a per capita basis, takes more refugees than any other” is not correct."

The prime minister is correct to say that Australia’s resettlement program through the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the highest per capita globally.

However, less than 1% of the world’s refugees are handled by the UNHCR resettlement program. It is a very tiny part of the picture.

When you look at the big picture, other countries – including many developing countries – host or take more refugees per capita than Australia.

They just don’t do it through the UNHCR resettlement program.

Item Type:	Non-refereed Article
Murdoch Affiliation(s):	School of Law
Publisher:	The Conversation Media Group
Copyright:	The Author
Publisher's Website:	http://theconversation.com/au
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/29681

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