4 Australia’s Extraterritorial Border Control Policies Azadeh Dastyari and Asher Hirsch By international standards, the numbers of refugees arriving in Australia irregularly are small. Nevertheless, Australia has instigated extreme policies to deter and deny people seeking its protection. The impacts of these policies are felt by some of the world’s most vulnerable individuals: refugees. For such individuals, the overall numbers are irrelevant because the harm caused to them is personal and real. Australia’s policies are also undermining the international protection regime by setting a harmful example for other states who wish to deny refugees protection. In this way, Australia’s impact on global protection is disproportionate to the size of the cohort of irregular arrivals. The majority of spontaneous arrivals in Australia (i.e., the arrival of individuals without visas or other legal authority to enter the country) are refugees. A refugee is defined in Article 1(A)(2) of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention) as a person who, “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.” A person who meets this definition is considered a refugee with rights under international law from the moment they meet the definition, not from the moment their claim for protection is assessed. As the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) handbook makes clear: [a] person is a refugee within the meaning of the 1951 Convention as soon as he fulfils the criteria contained in the definition. This would necessarily occur prior to the time at which his refugee status is formally determined. Recognition of his refugee status does not therefore make him a refugee but declares him to be one. He does not become a refugee because of recognition, but is recognized because he is a refugee.1 1 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status under the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 53 https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914994 Published online by Cambridge University Press