UN says Saudi teen is refugee, Australia to consider settlement

SYDNEY: The United Nations has found that a teenager who fled Saudi Arabia is a legitimate refugee and has asked Australia to take her in, officials in Canberra said yesterday.

“The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has referred Rahaf Mohammed AlQunun to Australia for consideration for refugee resettlement,” the Home Affairs Department said.

The decision marks a significant victory for the 18-year-old, who is in Bangkok, where she said Thai authorities attempted to block her from travelling to Australia to claim asylum.

The department said it would “consider this referral in the usual way, as it does with all UNHCR referrals”.

Australian officials have strongly hinted that Rahaf’s request would be accepted.

“If she is found to be a refugee, then we will give very serious consideration to a humanitarian visa,” Health Minister Greg Hunt had said before the UN determination was public.

Rahaf has documented her bid to flee her allegedly abusive family with minute-by-minute social media updates.

Her plight shot to public attention when she barricaded herself in a Bangkok airport hotel room to avoid deportation and shared dozens of fearful but defiant messages online insisting on her right to asylum.

Video footage posted on Twitter by a Saudi human rights activist appeared to show a Saudi official complaining that Thai authorities should have confiscated Rahaf ’s smartphone.

“When she arrived, she opened a new (Twitter) account and her followers grew to 45,000 in one day,” he said in Arabic.

“It would have been better if they had confiscated her mobile instead of her passport.”

Saudi Arabia has some of the world’s toughest restrictions on women, including a guardianship system that allows male family members to make decisions on behalf of female relatives.