Human rights abuses in the ODCs. Under Australia's Migration Act, asylum seekers arriving by boat are subject to mandatory, indefinite and non-reviewable detention. The possibility of release by a court is expressly precluded. All asylum seekers arriving after 19 July 2013 are subject to mandatory removal to ODCs on Nauru or Manus Island.The only exception to these mandatory detention and removal provisions is the personal, non-compellable and non-reviewable discretion of the Immigration Minister.

As of May 2016 around 847 people are being held in Manus Island ODC and 466 people in Nauru ODC. Most of the asylum seekers in the ODCs are from Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or are stateless. They include 50 children, 56 women (including pregnant women), the elderly and victims of torture. All have been in the ODCs for extended periods. The men currently held in the Manus Island ODC have all been there for more than two years.The ODCs have been criticised repeatedly since their inception in 2012, including by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Committee Against Torture, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Human Rights Law Centre, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, among others.

In Australia's recent review before the Human Rights Council, the Australian Government received at least 60 recommendations criticising these policies on asylum seekers and refugees. Of additional concern is the increasing lack of independent and public oversight of the ODCs. Public inspections of the ODCs by independent authorities including United Nations experts and the Australian Human Rights Commission have been regularly refused since 2013. The Australian Border Force Act (2015) has further hampered transparency regarding the ODCs by criminalising unauthorised disclosures of information by anyone who undertakes work in the OCDs.

Child abuse and other violations of the children's rights. Australia is unique in its treatment of asylum seeker children. No other country allows asylum seeker children to be detained indefinitely and arbitrarily. Successive inquiries by the Australian Human Rights Commission have found that the indefinite and arbitrary detention of asylum seeker children is inconsistent with Australia's human rights obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In 2014, the Medical Journal of Australia published a report stating that the vast majority of Australian paediatricians believe this practice of mandatory detention of asylum seeker children constitutes child abuse, a position since supported by the Australian Medical Association (AMA). The AMA also called for a moratorium on any child being transferred to Nauru after doctors at Brisbane's Lady Cilento Children's Hospital refused to discharge a one-year old asylum seeker child for fear the child would be returned to Nauru following medical treatment in Australia.

For more information on human rights abuses in the ODCs read the report Association with abuse.

Corporate responsibility for human rights abuses in the ODCs. While the Australian Government is the architect and funder of the offshore detention regime, the indefinite warehousing of asylum seekers and refugees in inhumane conditions would not be possible without the participation of Ferrovial. Ferrovial provides services central to maintaining a system that violates human rights standards, placing both the company and its stakeholders in the financial sector in breach of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights contained in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.