The Longest Journey

Description

Australia is one of only ten western countries which resettles refugees recommended by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The federal government has justifiably defended this long-term contribution to assisting the world's refugees. But how fair is the resettlement process? Does it always - as Amanda Vanstone and her predecessor, Philip Ruddock, insist - help the neediest of all refugees? Drawing on interviews with refugees, policymakers, officials and aid workers in Nairobi, Kakuma, Geneva, Canberra and Melbourne, this book looks at the opportunities and obstacles that face refugees whose homelands are in turmoil.

Peter Browne is editor of Australian Policy Online and a senior research fellow at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research. He is a former producer of the weekly Radio National current affairs program, The National Interest and has contributed articles to a range of publications, including The Age, the Canberra Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review and The Australian. To research this book he made a series of visits to East Africa, travelled to the remote Kakuma refugee camp near the Kenya - Sudan border, and interviewed refugees, aid workers, UNHCR staff and government officials in Nairobi, Kakuma, Geneva, London, Melbourne and Canberra.