A Teleological and Child-Sensitive Interpretation was an appropriate country of reference, holding that it was ‘practical and fair’ to do so given the claimant’s fear of persecution in Singapore and the fact that child would otherwise be without a country of reference for the inquiry. The Court, in upholding the decision of the AAT, relied upon principles espoused by the Federal Court of Australia in Koe v Minister for Immigration & Ethnic Affairs,84 which considered the question of whether Hong Kong could serve as a stateless applicant’s country or place of former habitual residence. It found that: [t]he objective of the Convention is to provide a practical humanitarian solution to the problems of refugees. It should be interpreted with this objective in mind. Individuals should not be denied the protection of the Convention by an unnecessarily narrow reading of the definition of ‘refugee’. It is not appropriate to conclude that an applicant has no recourse under the Convention simply because his or her ‘country’ of former habitual residence happens to be a colony or other entity that is not an independent sovereign state.85 The precedent set in SZEOH has been adopted in subsequent decisions of the AAT, such as in 1617142 (Refugee),86 where the AAT considered it appropriate to assess the stateless child (again, born in Australia and had only ever resided there) against the country of nationality or former habitual residence of her mother, namely, Lebanon.87 This approach is transformative for child applicants born outside the country of nationality or former habitual residence of their parent(s) and who have never resided in the territory of a designated country. In charting this course, the Australian courts and refugee status determination bodies have identified the guiding humanitarian purpose of the Refugee Convention as guarding against any narrow, rigid approach to the refugee question. They have signalled the duty to determine the question of risk without prejudice to the refugee claimant, which may deem the country of nationality or former habitual residence of a parent as a country of reference for a stateless child born abroad. In the end, they have concluded that it is appropriate, practical and fair to do so. In New Zealand, the Immigration and Protection Tribunal (‘IPT’) has recently engaged with the issue, in the case of a stateless child born to Malaysian nationals.88 In that case, the IPT delineated a purposive interpretive pathway to the finding that this stateless child born in New Zealand to Malaysian nationals shared the same former habitual residence, namely, Malaysia, as his parents. From a teleological and child-sensitive perspective, the reality of the legal returnability of the child with his parents to Malaysia meant that he shared the country of former habitual residence of his parents. In the context of a forward-looking inquiry into risk — by hypothesising the child’s presence at the time of refugee status determination, together with his parents in Malaysia — the IPT found as follows: in the case of a stateless child born abroad and denied their parent(s) nationality through discrimination, their connection to the designated country of reference/COFHR would stem from their shared parent–child aspect or relationship, manifest through the tangible transference of qualities from parent to child, which entail: (i) a child’s entitlement to a nationality in a designated country’s territory — here the unrealised nationality denied through discriminatory 84 85 86 87 88 Koe v Minister for Immigration & Ethnic Affairs (1997) 148 ALR 353 (‘Koe’). ibid 360. 1617142 (Refugee) [2017] AATA 990. ibid 14–18 [49]–[58]. BV (Malaysia) (n 19). 19