By Abby Seiff

After months of silence, Australia and Cambodia have begun to push ahead in earnest on a plan to relocate hundreds of refugees to the developing nation.

A special diplomat, former immigration department official Greg Kelly, has been installed at the embassy in Phnom Penh. Officials from both countries have begun scouting locations for the refugees and a few days ago, Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop reportedly re-confirmed the plan, claiming it would help Cambodia diversify its economy. In spite of the radio silence from both governments, it has become abundantly clear the plan will go forward.

The latest news has done little to calm dissenters. Indeed, the scheme has drawn continual outcry from rights groups, legal experts, and refugee protection agencies since news first surfaced in February. Cambodia is poor – the gross domestic product per capita is $1,000 to Australia’s $67,000. Cambodia is politically unstable; it has only just emerged from a year of the worst popular unrest and government-sanctioned violence since the late 1990s.

The country’s authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen has little regard for human rights; Uighur asylum seekers have been previously forced back to China where they faced persecution and death (the return came just a few years after Montagnard asylum seekers were turned back by the hundreds to Vietnam). Social services are almost non-existent, and the nascent refugee office has shown limited capability to provide stability even for the 68 people who make up Cambodia’s refugee population.

For those with even the faintest knowledge of Cambodia, the arguments against the project are myriad and obvious. They have not, however, dissuaded either government from forging ahead.

Defenders have argued, in essence, that Cambodia isn’t that bad. That it is, without a doubt, far better than war-ravaged Syria, or the areas of western Myanmar where being a Muslim Rohingya will likely see you rounded up into a camp with scant health services. It is a weak argument but it is well trodden. Abbott’s immigration minister, Scott Morrison, has noted without any apparent irony that being granted refugee status “is not a ticket to a first-class economy.”

Indeed, from the perspective of leaders of both countries, the prospect is (as Hun Sen is fond of saying) a win-win. Australian prime minister Tony Abbott is pandering to a base that has been primed by two decades of anti-refugee rhetoric from both major political groupings.

Cambodian leaders have repeatedly shown their willingness to do almost anything for a buck, and Hun Sen knows that by taking in refugees not wanted in Australia he gets the added benefit of exposing the shortcomings of the type of nations so quick to condemn Cambodia.

With so little information coming forward, meanwhile, it remains anyone’s guess what awaits the refugees. With minimal effort, the Australian government – if it so desires – should be able to work with the Cambodian government ensure those who come get basic care. That includes housing, Khmer language training, job placement assistance, health care, schooling, and paths to citizenship. These are minimal requirements, and yet they are not currently offered to the few dozen refugees who are already in Cambodia.

The Australian government cannot, however, do anything to ensure that civil unrest doesn’t one day spill over into violence. It cannot ensure that Khmer citizens will not vent anger out on these foreigners. It cannot ensure that refugees who stand up for their rights are not met with a harsh police response.

With luck, those who come to Cambodia will bring much needed skills and abilities. More certainly, however, they will bring the wounds of war – trauma exacerbated by Australia’s asylum seeker detention centers, which, also, have been outsourced to poor and poorly-run neighboring countries .

Humanitarian considerations aside, in truth, neither country knows what it is getting into. While Cambodia will have to shoulder any problems that arise, Australia will surely get the brunt of the blame – as it did when riots broke out in February at their detention center on Manus Island and guards beat to death an unarmed asylum seeker.

Politically, the plan is win-win. But one wonders whether either government has given a second thought to long-term implications. It seems that little good can come of the world’s wealthiest nations shifting their most basic moral responsibility onto the world’s poorest.

Ms. Abby Seiff is a Cambodia-based journalist. Follow her on twitter @instupor.