2026-27 Australia’s Humanitarian Program

This submission was made in response to the Discussion Paper Australia’s Humanitarian Program 2026-27, issued by the Department of Home Affairs.

Summary of recommendations

1. Increase the overall size of the offshore Australian Humanitarian Program to respond to both acute humanitarian emergencies and protracted displacement situations, particularly in under‑resourced regions.
2. Allocate a minimum of 3% across all onshore and offshore components of the total Australian Humanitarian Program places as a quarantined quota for LGBTIQA+ forcibly displaced people, with a longer‑term target of 6–10%.
3. Ensure pathways to resettlement are inclusive by design to reflect the lived realities of LGBTIQA+ people impacted by criminalisation, persecution, and non‑recognition of relationships.
4. Develop and implement all related policy reforms through a structured consultative process with refugee communities, LGBTIQA+ organisations, including specifically LGBTIQA+ refugee-led organisations, and other civil society stakeholders.
5. Ensure that prioritisation for resettlement within the Refugee category is based primarily on assessed protection risk, irrespective of whether applicants have existing family or community connections in Australia.
6. Work in partnership with UNHCR to improve the identification of LGBTIQA+ protection risks within refugee status determination and referral processes, including through guidance, training, and safeguards that enable safe disclosures.
7. Develop scalable, rapid‑access, community‑led emergency protection pathways for LGBTIQA+ individuals facing persecution who are unable to safely leave their country of origin, ensuring timely access to protection and durable resettlement outcomes.
8. Authorise trusted civil society and refugee-led organisations, particularly those run by LGBTIQA+ forcibly displaced people, to identify, assess, and refer individuals facing acute protection risks into humanitarian and emergency pathways, particularly where formal international mechanisms are inaccessible.
9. Ensure that emergency protection mechanisms are responsive to the lived realities of LGBTIQA+ persecution, including cumulative and ongoing harm, rather than requiring evidence of a single imminent incident.
10. Amend family reunion policy to allow case‑by‑case consideration of applications involving de-facto LGBTIQA+ partners who were not disclosed at the time of the original protection or humanitarian visa grant.
11. Require decision‑makers to apply trauma‑informed and contextual discretion when assessing the genuineness of LGBTIQA+ relationships, recognising that conventional forms of documentary evidence may be unavailable or unsafe to obtain.
12. Expand the definition of “family” within the Humanitarian Program and the Family Stream of the Migration Program to include extended family members and chosen family units, particularly for LGBTIQA+ refugees.
13. Formally recognise targeted, community-led initiatives such as Bridge to Safety for LGBTIQA+ Refugees as integral components of the Special Humanitarian Program.
14. Provide sustainable funding and operational support to enable the continuation and expansion of the Bridge to Safety for LGBTIQA+ Refugees.
15. Extend Assisted Passage support to LGBTIQA+ refugees resettled through the Bridge to Safety for LGBTIQA+ Refugees.
16. Apply the SHP eligibility of “substantial discrimination amounting to a gross violation of human rights” as presumptively met for LGBTIQA+ applicants from countries with documented criminalisation or persecution.
17. Following the introduction of the Bridge to Safety for LGBTIQA+ Refugees Program, continue to scale up NGO- and community-led referral pathways, particularly for those unable to register safely with UNHCR or engage in national protection systems.
18. Fund the Forcibly Displaced People Network as the LGBTIQA+ refugee-led peak body to build settlement capability across sectors including settlement, health, housing, and employment.
19. Provide sustainable and quarantined funding for LGBTIQA+ refugee- and migrant- led community organisations, recognising their essential role in supporting belonging, safety, and long-term settlement outcomes.
20. Mandate comprehensive training on working with LGBTIQA+ refugees in all government-funded settlement service contracts, developed and delivered in partnership with LGBTIQA+ refugee-led organisations.
21. Redesign Community Support Program to explicitly prioritise individuals with intersectional and compounded risks, including LGBTIQA+ people, people with disabilities, and others facing compounded marginalisation.
22. Remove job-readiness criteria, age and language which currently disadvantage people impacted by displacement, exclusion from education, or legal persecution.
23. Reduce or subsidise application and administration fees through means-tested models to increase accessibility.
24. Ensure that financial barriers to access Community Support Program are levelled or subsidised, particularly for systemically marginalised applicants and community sponsors.
25. Establish partnerships with LGBTIQA+ community-led and in particular LGBTIQA+ refugee-led organisations to act as Approved Proposing Organisations or introduce an alternative model for intermediary organisations that enables safe and trusted sponsorship.
26. Mandate that Approved Proposing Organisations (or similar organisations under the new model) demonstrate cultural safety, human rights compliance, and LGBTIQA+ inclusion as a condition of government accreditation.
27. Mandate the meaningful involvement of LGBTIQA+ refugee-led organisations in the design, implementation, monitoring, and review of all complementary pathway programs.
28. Ensure that all existing and future complementary pathway programs are formally additional to, and do not displace or substitute for, Government-led humanitarian resettlement commitments.
29. Ensure that multi-source country reports are used to assess protection claims based on SOGIESC grounds, and provide guidance where such reports are lacking.
30. Mandate periodic comprehensive training on SOGIESC protection claims across all stages of refugee status determination for all RSD decision makers at both Departmental and Tribunal levels, co-designed with and delivered by LGBTIQA+ refugee-led organisations.
31. Conduct annual reviews of the Procedural Advice Manual and Administrative Review Tribunal guidelines on assessment of SOGIESC protection claims across all stages of RSD.
32. Ensure that short, compelled returns to a country of origin undertaken solely to maintain lawful entry or access to international protection systems in a neighbouring country are not treated as evidence of safety, durability of return, or diminished protection need in refugee and humanitarian decision‑making for LGBTIQA+ applicants.
33. Introduce flexible exemptions and alternative evidentiary pathways to parental consent requirements where applicants are survivors of forced marriage, family violence, or family‑based persecution, including specifically LGBTIQA+ adults, children and adolescents, ensuring that consent requirements do not place applicants at risk or obstruct access to refugee and humanitarian visas.