Australia has spent $9.6bn in just four years on its asylum seeker policy – the majority on its offshore and mainland detention centres – according to a new report from Unicef and Save the Children. The organisations found the current policy was expensive and unsustainable in its financial, human, and diplomatic costs. Last month the Guardian published more than 2,000 leaked documents detailing widespread mental trauma and abuse in the Nauru facility. The costs were based on the estimated 32,000 men, women and children in the asylum seeker processing system. Tuesday’s report cited estimates of as many as 7,000 children “trapped in transit” in Indonesia alone, “unable to access safe pathways to protection”.

Source: The Guardian September 12, 2016 13:52 UTC