viaThe Post Courier

By TODAGIA KELOLA

ATTORNEY General Kerenga Kua has strongly refuted an assessment by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, that PNG lacks “any national capacity” to implement its international refugee obligations.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, had raised these concerns in a letter to the Australian Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, last week.
Mr Guterres had stated that PNG was not yet party to the UN conventions on torture and statelessness and warned that the nation lacked the necessary legal framework to address refugee issues.
There was also a risk, he said, of local PNG authorities sending asylum seekers back to their countries of origin, particularly given the “porous and often unregulated” nature of its borders.
He had stated in the letter that it was not clear to his agency that the transfer of boatpeople to Papua New Guinea was “fully appropriate”.
“It was the UNHCR’s assessment that PNG does not have the legal safeguards nor the competence or capacity to shoulder alone the responsibility of protecting and processing asylum-seekers transferred by Australia,” he wrote.
But Attorney General, Kerenga Kua, refuted these assessments in an interview with the AAP, saying that Papua New Guinea’s legal system is equipped to deal with refugee processing and human rights issues.
He told the AAP that PNG’s 37-year-old constitution codifies most of the rights contained in the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.
“I don’t see how one could possibly say that PNG has inadequate regulatory or legal framework to deal with the issues when we have one of the best constitutions in the world in so far as protection of human rights is concerned,” the Attorney General said.
“You cannot find a codified set of human rights in Australia, whereas we do. It is part of our constitution.”
He added that PNG was ready and able to handle the intake.
“Where detailed work is required, that will be developed and is being developed and will initially take the form of an administrative management agreement between Australia and PNG to set out the functional details,” he said.