As of 2025-09. The Refugee Council of Australia's statistics run to 30 September 2025 and record 163 people transferred to Nauru since May 2022; a small population remains in Nauru under the continuing arrangement, while the Manus Island centre closed in 2017.
Under the "Pacific Solution" from 2001 and again from August 2012, Australia transferred asylum seekers intercepted at sea to processing centres on Nauru and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, where they were held while claims were assessed, with successive Australian governments stating that anyone arriving by boat would never be resettled in Australia. Detention was prolonged and indefinite, with people held for years while resettlement options were negotiated with third countries including the United States, New Zealand and Cambodia. The Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea ruled on 26 April 2016 that detention at the Manus centre breached the constitutional right to personal liberty and was therefore illegal, and ordered both governments to end it; the centre formally closed on 31 October 2017, when about 690 men remained and several hundred refused to leave, and they were moved to alternative accommodation on the island. The Nauru centre wound down to zero residents in March 2019 and was reactivated under a new agreement in September 2021 as a standing capability. At least eight people died in connection with the Manus operation between 2013 and 2019, from suicide, violence and delayed medical treatment, and leaked incident reports and repeated UN and medical assessments documented severe mental health deterioration among detainees. Australia maintains that the policy ended deaths at sea by deterring boat voyages and that its operation is lawful; UN human rights bodies, the UNHCR and Australian medical and legal organisations have found the arrangements to constitute arbitrary and indefinite detention with serious health consequences.
Australia transferring asylum seekers who arrived by boat to processing centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea under bilateral agreements, with the host states holding formal legal responsibility
Australian Parliamentary Library figures record roughly 51,000 irregular maritime arrivals between 2008 and the end of 2013. Of these, about 4,180 were transferred to Nauru and Manus Island after offshore processing resumed on 13 August 2012; a handful of further transfers have occurred since 2022 under the 'enduring' Nauru arrangement.
At least eight men died in connection with the Manus Island centre between 2014 and 2019 — including the murder of Reza Barati during the February 2014 disturbances, Hamid Kehazaei's death from sepsis after delayed medical evacuation, a drowning and several suicides — and refugee advocacy organisations including the Refugee Council of Australia count at least fourteen deaths across Manus and Nauru combined. The Australian government has never published a consolidated figure, which is the main source of the range.
The PNG Supreme Court found the Manus detention unlawful, the Australian government's 2015 Moss Review and the leaked 'Nauru Files' documented sexual assault, self-harm and abuse of children in the Nauru centre, and Amnesty International's 2016 report 'Island of Despair' characterised the deliberate infliction of these conditions on Nauru as amounting to torture — a characterisation the Australian government rejects.
Nauru, Indian Ocean Ter.