436 Melbourne University Law Review [Vol 40:401 C Statelessness and Well-Founded Fear of Persecution As discussed above, while statelessness per se is insufficient to support a claim for refugee protection, there are a number of ways in which the absence of nationality can give rise to a well-founded fear of being persecuted.185 One fascinating and, until recently, under-explored question is whether denial or deprivation of nationality on Refugee Convention grounds is itself persecutory, or whether it is only where the consequences of a lack of nationality are sufficiently serious that the persecution standard is attained.186 Consistent with the global trend, there is very little case law on this question in Australia, and that which exists yields contradictory results. On one hand, the Federal Court has recognised that ‘the denial of citizenship by reason of nationality, race, religion or membership of a social group may constitute persecution.’187 Sometimes the decision-maker does not distinguish between the deprivation of nationality itself, and its consequences. For example, in a decision involving the application for a protection visa by a stateless former resident of Bhutan, the RRT found that: the applicant’s exclusion from the right to Bhutanese citizenship and the right to return to the country where his family had lived for three generations, as well as all the disadvantages that emanated from the depravation [sic] of these rights amount to persecution for the Convention reason of ethnicity.188 185 For a brief overview see Kate Darling, ‘Protection of Stateless Persons in International Asylum and Refugee Law’ (2009) 21 International Journal of Refugee Law 742. 186 The question is canvassed in Refugee Status, UN Doc PPLA/2014/01. See also Maryellen Fullerton, ‘The Intersection of Statelessness and Refugee Protection in US Asylum Policy’ (2014) 2 Journal on Migration and Human Security 144. 187 BZADW v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection [2014] FCA 541 (26 May 2014) [21] (Dowsett J). This view is supported by the German Federal Administrative Court, focusing on the intensity of the interference and the resulting exclusion from the rights of citizenship: Bundesverwaltungsgericht [German Federal Administrative Court], BVerwG 10 C 50.07, 26 February 2009, [18]. Specifically, the Court held that (emphasis added) (Minh-Quan Nguyen trans): An act of persecution by the state need not consist of interferences with life, limb or freedom. Violations of other proprietary rights and liberties may also, according to the circumstances of the case, correspond to persecution. Persecution may also be seen, as a matter of principle, from the intensity of the interference where the state divests a citizen of the essential rights of citizenship and thereby excludes them from the general peaceful order of the unified state. 188 071626084 [2007] RRTA 304 (21 November 2007) (Member Roushan).