When you apply for protection in Australia a case officer from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship will use this definition to decide whether or not you are a refugee and whether you should be given a Protection visa to stay in Australia. The case officer will ask you questions to help them decide whether or not you are a refugee. It is important that you understand the definition of who a refugee is before you go to your interview. The case officer will be thinking about this definition when they ask you questions because he/she will have to decide whether your story and situation makes you a refugee according the definition. The definition of is a refugee is can be found in the Refugee Convention. Please click here to see the Refugee Convention definition explained.

Profile means the case officer will think to themselves – are you really likely to be of interest to the person/people you fear persecution from? To decide this the case officer will read information about your country and people who are in a similar situation to you in your country and look to find out if the country information says that they are at risk. It is important for you to tell the DIAC case officer about every experience of threats, harm and mistreatment you and anyone you know has experienced (including family and friends) no matter how insignificant you think it is as this will help to show that you are going to be targeted in your country and helps to show you have a profile.

When they are deciding if you really are at risk in your country, the case officer might consider whether you left your country straight away or whether you waited and also whether you applied for asylum straight away after arriving in Australia. The things the DIAC case officer will usually consider are:

• If you were persecuted in your country, did you leave straight away or did you wait there for some time before leaving?
• If you did not leave straight away – why not?
• If you did not leave straight away – what was your situation in your country before you left?
• Did you wait to apply for asylum in Australia after you arrived or did you apply straight away?
• If you waited to apply for asylum in Australia – why did you wait?

Even if you did not leave your country straight away or you did not apply for asylum straight away, this is ok, but you might have to explain to the case officer the reasons why.

It’s important to be prepared to explain any delay in leaving your country or applying for Protection in Australia. An example of a relevant reasons might include that the situation in your country changed significantly after you left and now you are in danger even though you weren’t before.

The case officer will assess whether your claims are credible. This means that they will consider whether they think your claims are all true. Credibility is a key part of the refugee determination process. How credible you are plays an important role in the outcome of your refugee application. It is so important to make sure that:

1. Everything you write in your application and statement of claims is correct and true
2. Every document you submit is genuine
3. You don’t try to make your situation sound worse than it really is
4. All the dates you give in your application are correct
5. If you can get real evidence about any part of your claim you do this

If the case officer thinks that you are lying about one thing in your application– they might think you are lying about everything else too.

If you have documents to support your claim, this can be very helpful for your case. For more information about what documents you can gather to support your case please click here.

Any documents you provide to the DIAC in support of your application will be closely looked at by the DIAC. Do not assume that they will accept your documents on face value without investigating them. The DIAC will want to see originals or certified copies of all documents. If you only have a photocopy still submit the document as long as it is genuine. Any document submitted will be submitted to the Document Examination Unit to assess whether the document is genuine or not.

DIAC will also look at:

• The spelling of your name and if it matches your name on the document
• The date of the document.
• Who signed the document – they might do checks about this person.
• The contact details of the person who made the document – the DIAC might contact this person to confirm that it is real.
• Cross check any information on a document with your personal details to make sure there are no inconsistencies with your application, such as your date of birth, country or city of birth.
• Make sure the dates of any documents are consistent with dates of things you say happened in your claims.

Remember never to provide to the DIAC any document that you do not know for sure is genuine as any doubt that the case officer has about the genuineness of a document may result in them disbelieving other parts of your claims.

An issue that the DIAC case officer will always consider is how you left your home country. This is known as exit. This is important to the case officer as they will look at how easily you were able to leave the country and if that makes sense given your claims. They will ask themselves – if you are of such interest or are seen as a threat to the government or police how did you manage to leave the county? There could be many reasons why this was possible – but you need to be able to explain this. The DIAC case officer will also consider:

• How you got your passport if it is genuine
• How you were able to leave on a genuine passport if you were of interest to the authorities
• Why you were not stopped if you are claiming you are on a blacklist or known to the government

How you were able to get your visa to Australia particularly if you claim you were in hiding at the time you prepared the visa application?

The DIAC case officer will look at independent country information about your country which assists them in their decision making on your application. Country information is obtained from a wide range of sources, including national governments, non-government organisations, international organisations and the news media.

This country information will be used to assess whether someone in your situation really would face serious harm if you return to your country.

The case officer will look more closely at any country information that supports specific aspects of your claims rather than very general information which is not necessarily relevant to your particular claims.

It is important that you tell the truth about everything that has happened to you. Do not exaggerate your story to try to strengthen your case. If you exaggerate what has happened to you – this can go against your case. The case officer might think that other parts of your story are not true either.

For example – If you were a low-level political activist in a political party, the case officer will want to see information from your country which says low-level political activists are at risk – it might not be that helpful if the only country information says that only high-level leaders of that party are being persecuted.