Senator Joe Biden
President-Elect
The United States of America

Dear Senator Biden,

Congratulations from Australia on being elected as the 46th President of the United States of America. Your election as President and Senator Kamala Harris as Vice President has given new hope for the millions of fair-minded people across the USA and the world.  America is once again able to champion for fairness, decency, justice and human rights in the world.

During the election campaign and upon winning you eloquently asserted for a less belligerent but more open and humane United States. You called for a nation that welcomes and embraces the multicultural identity and inclusivity.

The Australian Advocacy for Good Governance in Sri Lanka, the Voice for Democracy in Sri Lanka Collective, and the co-signatories of this appeal, wish to draw your attention to the plight of hundreds of refugees who had sought asylum in Australia. Most of them have been languishing in offshore detention centres for far too long under extremely inhumane conditions.

In a deal made in 2016 between President Barak Obama and our then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the USA publicly agreed to take up to 1,500 refugees, predominantly from Iran, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. However, President Trump who replaced his great predecessor months after, branded this deal ‘dumb’ and was very selective in allowing only a few to immigrate as an act of calculated grandstanding. Many refugees – including those certified by the IOM as genuine refugees – are still held in the Australian offshore island-camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

The UN Refugee Convention recognises that refugees often need to enter a country without permission. Australia is in violation of the Convention as under Article 31, countries who have signed the Convention cannot punish refugees for entering or living without permission, or unnecessarily restrict their freedom of movement.

We, therefore, earnestly appeal to you as President-elect, and Senator Kamala Harris as Vice President-elect, to revive the 2016 deal and give the refugees languishing in offshore detention centers an opportunity to start their life anew.

Furthermore, we call upon you and your upcoming administration to exert the best possible influence on the Australian government to adopt a principled approach towards all remaining refugees and asylum seekers in the said islands, and release them sooner into the community.

These long forgotten souls have suffered enough. They deserve better.