Amnesty International (AI) [official website] released a report [official report] Wednesday criticizing the role two companies are playing in a refugee “processing” system Australia is carrying out [press release] on the Pacific island of Nauru. AI says that for multiple years, Australia has operated an offshore processing site on Nauru where refugees and asylum seekers are isolated in remote locations and subjected to cruel and degrading conditions and are often forbidden from leaving the island even when granted refugee status. Lucy Graham, AI’s Researcher on Business and Human Rights, stated that:

The Australian government has created an island of despair for refugees and people seeking asylum on Nauru, but an island of profit for companies making millions of dollars from a system so deliberately and inherently cruel and abusive it amounts to torture. By knowingly enabling the continuation of this system, which is specifically designed to cause suffering and deter people from traveling to Australia by boat to seek asylum, Broadspectrum and Ferrovial are unequivocally complicit in this abuse.

The rights of refugees has been of international concern and Australia has particularly been under fire for its treatment of refugees. In February a petition was filed in the International Criminal Court by a coalition of legal experts [JURIST report] claiming the offshore island detention constitutes a human rights violation. Last October, AI accused Australia of using the island of Nauru as an “open-air prison” [JURIST report] to prevent immigration of asylum seekers. In August Australia announced [JURIST report] that Australia and Papua New Guinea intend on closing the controversial Manus Island detention center. That same month AI and Human Rights Watch issued reports [JURIST report] stating that Australia is ignoring inhumane treatment of detainees in Nauru. Papua New Guinea officials claimed last May that refugees are not being detained [JURIST report] on Manus Island, as they are given access to mainland Australia. The statement by officials followed a ruling by the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court that the Australian off-shore detention facility was illegal, in direct opposition to a ruling [JURIST report] by the Australian Supreme Court earlier this year that the off-shore detention was legal.