Paper details

Paper authors	Eleanor Davey
In panel on	“Humanitarian borders” between care and control
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

This paper explores the role of Save the Children Australia (SCA) in Australian-run detention centres. Australia has been an influential pioneer in the global trend towards detention and criminalisation of asylum-seekers and refugees. It has twice instituted offshore detention of asylum-seekers who arrive via boat: from 2001-2008 and again since 2012. In the second phase, Save the Children Australia (SCA), along with the Salvation Army (TSA), took lucrative contracts to provide education, welfare, recreation, and casework services to refugees and asylum seekers indefinitely detained through an arrangement between Australia and two Pacific Island nations, Nauru and Papua New Guinea. SCA’s offshore operations, which ran from 2012-2015, represent a particularly controversial example of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working as service providers within this system. Yet this moment remains shadowy and poorly researched, obscured by reticence and censorship. The paper focuses on SCA due to the duration of their programs, their international profile, and the unique place of children in humanitarian iconography. It considers organisational decision-making and ethics, outlining the successive challenges that arose as SCA’s operations expanded and the organisation and its staff came into conflict with both their government employers and their own principles.

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