2016] The Protection of Stateless Persons in Australian Law 427 This position has since been affirmed,132 and courts have uniformly made clear that where stateless persons claim protection under the Refugee Convention, ‘refugee status must be assessed on the basis of the usual criteria, that is by demonstrating a well-founded fear of being persecuted for a Convention reason’.133 While this may reflect a principled approach, and, indeed, the object and purpose of the Refugee Convention, there are several ways in which the claims of stateless persons raise unique issues that may not be adequately addressed by refugee law. Even when a decision-maker is engaged solely in assessing whether or not a stateless person meets the refugee definition, the inadequacy of processes to determine statelessness may pose obstacles. 2 Assessing Whether a Person is Stateless For the purposes of assessing a stateless person’s claim to refugee status under art 1(A)(2) of the Refugee Convention, the pertinent question is whether he or she can be understood as ‘not having a nationality’. While phrased in similar, although not identical, terms to art 1(1) of the 1954 Convention’s stipulation that a stateless person is ‘not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law’,134 refugee decision-makers do not usually make reference to the 1954 Convention in assessing this element of the refugee definition. Ascertaining whether a person has a nationality is, however, a vital first step in the examination of any protection claim because a finding that a person is stateless directs the decision-maker to the second part of the refugee definition (and, hence, to the question of the country of former habitual residence as the reference country, which is crucial to the nature of the harm feared). It is also often the core of the claim where a stateless person relies on an absence of nationality as the source of his or her fear of being persecuted. PAM3 appropriately states that ‘[i]f an applicant claims to be stateless, this issue should be considered and if possible a finding made before their 132 Tontegode v Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs [2002] FCAFC 131 (15 May 2002) [5]; QAEE of 2002 v Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs [2003] FCAFC 46 (17 March 2003) [12]. 133 Hathaway and Foster, above n 7, 70 (citations omitted). 134 The PAM3 recognises this in noting that for the purposes of the 1954 Convention the term ‘stateless’ means ‘a person who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law’. For the purposes of the Refugee Convention, the PAM3 states that statelessness is ‘established where no country recognises the person as holding citizenship’: Department of Immigration and Border Protection (Cth), PAM3, above n 93, 125–6 [78].