Woomera, South Australia and Woomera was chosen as a site for such a facility. The establishment of the Woomera Immigration Detention Centre in 1999, through the refurbishment of the original Woomera Village construction camp at 'Woomera West', eventually brought in new permanent staff (as the Nurrungar people were leaving) to settle and maintain the village population at around 1,200. The immigration detention centre, however, proved to be a highly controversial facility and it closed in early 2003 after only about 36 months of operation, at which point the land and buildings were handed back to the Defence Department. Following the closure of the
LGBT refugees and asylum seekers in Canada measurement. In 2002, The Globe and Mail reported that between 1999 and 2004, almost 2,500 GSM/LGBT asylum seekers made claims based on sexual or gender orientation. These claims included 75 different countries. According to Sean Rehagg in 2004, 1,358 LGBT/GSM claims were adjudicated, or decided in 2004. Statistics between April 2009 and June 2011 show that "561 refugee claims based on sexual orientation were finalized before the Refugee Protection Division [RPD] of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada [IRB], with 58 per cent of those claims being granted refugee protection." The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees