Who are Asylum Seekers?
Asylum seekers are unwitting victims of circumstances beyond their control who have fled their own country and applied to the government of another country for protection as a refugee under the United Nations Refugee Convention, which defines a refugee as someone who is outside their own country and cannot return due to a well-founded fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.
Armed conflicts displace large groups of people, especially where exclusion of ethnic, racial or religious groups is a direct aim of a war. People escape from situations ofpersecution that result from political or civil conflict and social or cultural discrimination.
Contrary to the images sometimes projected, most asylum seekers who arrive in Australia come by air as authorized travellers. In their own countries they have suffered in ways that we find hard to imagine. They have families and they both grieve for them and worry about them. They keep hoping the Australian people can get to know their real stories so that they will not be seen as criminals or terrorists. Asylum seekers are immensely grateful to all those who support them in any way.
The asylum seekers profiled below are from Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Sudan.
Cameroon
Freedom of expression is severely limited. A secessionist movement, the Southern Cameroon National Council, has been declared illegal. The country's progress is hampered by a level of corruption that is among the highest in the world.
Chad
Instability, violence and unrest in neighbouring Sudan's Darfur region have spilled across the border, along with hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees. These have been joined by thousands of Chadians fleeing rebel fighting as well as violence between the mainly ethnic Arab-Muslim north and ethnic Christian and Animist south in Chad. Chad and Sudan accuse each other of backing and harbouring rebels.
Democratic Republic of Congo
The Democratic Republic of Congo has been at the centre of what could be termed Africa's world war, which has claimed an estimated three million lives and left the country in the grip of a humanitarian crisis. The five-year conflict pitted government forces, supported by Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, against rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda.
Kenya
Kenya's ethnic diversity is a source of ongoing conflict. Some 1,500 people died in fighting and 300,000 were displaced following the disputed December 2007 election. Pressing challenges include high unemployment, crime and poverty. Most Kenyans live below the poverty level of $1 a day. It is estimated that up to $1bn was lost to graft between 2002 and 2005. Droughts frequently put millions of people at risk.
Nigeria
Thousands of people have died over the past few years in communal rivalry and separatist aspirations are growing. The imposition of Islamic law in several states has embedded divisions and caused thousands of Christians to flee. Inter-faith violence is said to be rooted in poverty, unemployment and competition for land.
Pakistan
Pakistan faces domestic political upheavals and regional confrontations. Life is precarious for the tiny Christian minority, who make up less than 5 percent of the entire population. Christians in Pakistan are feeling increasingly insecure after violent attacks by Muslim extremists. The rising intolerance and violence against Christians is a result of the Talibanization and promulgation of Sharia law in some parts of the country.
Sri Lanka
The island has been scarred by a long and bitter civil war, estimated to have killed about 70,000 people and which arose out of ethnic tensions between the majority Buddhist Sinhalese and the mainly Hindu Tamil minority.
Sudan
The civil war between the mainly Muslim north and the Animist and Christian south is said to have cost the lives of 1.5 million people. Fighting has also broken out in the western region of Darfur, where the UN says more than two million people have fled their homes and more than 200,000 have been killed. In Darfur, pro-government Arab militias are accused of carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against non-Arab groups in the region.