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RI to push Oz to evaluate migrant policies
Good job: Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi (second right), Foreign Ministry director general for multilateral affairs Hasan Kleib (left), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) country representative Mark Smulders (second left) and UN resident coordinator for Indonesia Douglas Broderick give an award to 8-year-old Gifti Bunga Adianti for winning a poster-drawing competition held to celebrate UN Day on Tuesday
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Good job: Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi (second right), Foreign Ministry director general for multilateral affairs Hasan Kleib (left), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) country representative Mark Smulders (second left) and UN resident coordinator for Indonesia Douglas Broderick give an award to 8-year-old Gifti Bunga Adianti for winning a poster-drawing competition held to celebrate UN Day on Tuesday.(JP/Jerry Adiguna) (second right), Foreign Ministry director general for multilateral affairs Hasan Kleib (left), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) country representative Mark Smulders (second left) and UN resident coordinator for Indonesia Douglas Broderick give an award to 8-year-old Gifti Bunga Adianti for winning a poster-drawing competition held to celebrate UN Day on Tuesday.(JP/Jerry Adiguna)
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span class="inline inline-center">Good job: Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi (second right), Foreign Ministry director general for multilateral affairs Hasan Kleib (left), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) country representative Mark Smulders (second left) and UN resident coordinator for Indonesia Douglas Broderick give an award to 8-year-old Gifti Bunga Adianti for winning a poster-drawing competition held to celebrate UN Day on Tuesday.(JP/Jerry Adiguna)
Ahead of Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's visit to Jakarta on Thursday, Indonesia has urged its southern neighbor to find lasting solutions to the irregular movement of migrants in the region.
Hasan Kleib, the Foreign Ministry's director general for multilateral affairs, urged Australia to sit down and talk with other affected countries in order to brainstorm policies that would benefit all parties and address the root causes of the problem.
'The handling of irregular migrants is a transnational issue. There must be a shared responsibility among countries of origin, transit and destination,' Hasan told reporters on the sidelines of a UN event in Jakarta on Tuesday.
'What we ask ' given the effect of [Australia's migrant] policies in the region ' is that we all sit down to talk about sharing responsibilities.'
According to him, stern policies such as Australia's 'turn-back-the-boats' approach have had unintended effects on countries in the region, with Indonesia itself facing the increasing likelihood of turning into a destination country for asylum seekers turned around by the Australian border patrol.
'We don't even know when they depart [for Australia], but when boats are towed back they will ultimately become our burden,' he added.
The senior diplomat did, however, stress that Indonesia would continue to respect its neighbor's national policies, such as sovereignty over its borders and the offshore processing of asylum seekers.
To this end, Hasan said Indonesia was preparing to host the third Jakarta Meeting, a preparatory senior officials' meeting ahead of the upcoming Bali Process next year.
The meeting, slated for Nov. 27 to 28, will involve 14 countries most affected by irregular migration, including countries of origin like Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar; transit countries like Malaysia; and destination countries like Australia and New Zealand.
It will also be observed by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Indonesia uses a bilateral cooperation framework to address people smuggling and human trafficking along with Australia, the forum's current cochair alongside Indonesia, as a destination country, and Afghanistan as a source country.
With the recent influx of migrants into Europe, Indonesia will soon have to find alternative solutions for the 13,000 migrants it is currently housing, including a few thousand Rohingya people it has agreed to temporarily accommodate until May next year.
Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi said the irregular movement of migrants in Southeast Asia might be brought up in the context of transnational crimes during Turnbull's brief visit to Jakarta.
'The current situation in Europe will definitely affect the process of migrant resettlement globally,' Retno told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
A recent report by human rights group Amnesty International on the status of some 1,000 Rohingya in Indonesia's Aceh region urged the international community to share the responsibility for aiding asylum seekers.
