Three Vietnamese mothers and their children, whose boats were turned back by Australia two years ago, have been granted refugee status by the United Nations.

Tran Thi Thanh Loan, Tran Thi Lua and Nguyen Thi Phuc and their children have been living in detention in Jakarta since the end of January this year.

The trio’s lawyer announced their recently granted refugee status via a facebook post.

The families were among 92 Vietnamese asylum seekers who were intercepted at sea back in 2015.

The Australian government forcibly returned the boats to Vietnam after it received written assurance from the Vietnamese government that the asylum seekers would not be punished upon arrival.

But it later came to air that several individuals were imprisoned on their return.

Loan and Lua were also threated with 15 years in prison for helping to organise the asylum seeker boats.

The three mothers and their children subsequently fled to Australia by boat for a second time at the start of this year, only to be rescued by Indonesian authorities after their boat began sinking 10 days into the trip.

Loan says she originally left Vietnam in 2015 because the government had seized her land.

She also states discrimination against her religion, and loss of livelihood due to Chinese fishing in Vietnamese waters as motivating factors.

In December 2016, Australia’s immigration minister peter Dutton signed a formal agreement with Vietnam’s public security minister to return Vietnamese nationals with no legal right to enter or remain in Australia.