Mark Isaacs is the author of The Undesirables: Inside Nauru and Nauru Burning: An Uprising and Its Aftermath. He worked in the Nauru detention center from September 2012 to July 2013 as an employee of the Salvation Army, and he was commissioned by the Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin to visit Manus Island in November 2017 as part of an anthology for the “State of Refugees” project.
Members of the environmental group Greenpeace hold up a sign calling for Australia to allow refugee children to stay in the country in Sydney on February 14, 2016, after a hospital in Brisbane refused to send an asylum-seeker baby back to detention on Nauru.
An Indonesian police man carries an exhausted young boy following more rescue by search and rescue team in Cidaun, West Java on July 24, 2013. Rescuers searched the seas off Indonesia's Java island on July 24 for possibly dozens of asylum-seekers missing after their Australia-bound boat sank, leaving at least three dead, with 157 saved, an official said. Local rescue officials estimated there could have been "up to 200" passengers on the boat which was bound for Australia, while a survivor said some 250 had boarded the vessel. AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images)
