It would be a shame if the Paris attacks were used to justify harsher refugee policies, either in Australia or abroad. Now more than ever we must avoid divisive actions, writes Erika Feller.

The repercussions of the terrible events in Paris, just as with the horrifying September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, will be felt for a long time, including in the refugee context.

It would be unrealistic to assume otherwise and indeed appropriate mechanisms should be put in place to ensure that there are no loopholes in national asylum practices that could conceivably be exploited by terrorists, allowing them to gain admission to territory through the asylum channel.

Under international refugee law, refugee protection should be denied to persons seriously and reliably implicated in grave crimes. The so-called exclusion clauses should work, if rigorously applied, to make identification of such persons not only possible but necessary and to deny them refugee status, with their criminal prosecution, expulsion or extradition unimpeded.

The challenge, of course, will always be to strike the right balance between the security interests of states and the protection needs of genuine refugees, who are themselves escaping persecution and violence, including terrorism. Equating asylum with safe haven for terrorists is not only legally wrong, but it vilifies refugees in the public mind and exposes persons of particular races or religions to discrimination and hate-based harassment. No society can afford to create such rifts at any time, but particularly the present.

It would be a particular concern in this context if the tragedies of Paris were to become yet further justification for maintaining Australia's deeply controversial asylum policies centring on offshore processing and detention on Manus Island and Nauru. For too long these policies have been formed and debated seemingly in disregard of what is happening elsewhere - a topic to be tackled by an international gathering of academics and policy makers at the 2015 Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law Conference being held in Sydney on November 20.

Worldwide displacement is now at its highest level ever recorded, with some 60 million persons currently displaced. More than one third are refugees and asylum seekers, and two thirds internally displaced. Many refugees come from, or find themselves in, countries that not only fall into the highest risk category for civil conflict, but are also ranked amongst the world's poorest nations - unable or unwilling to provide the means necessary for a decent and sustainable life.

There is a misconception that the majority of refugees in our neighbouring countries are tolerably looked after in camps. This is false. Some 70 per cent throughout the region are actually living desperate lives, fending for themselves outside any organised camp.

If there is one positive thing coming out of the current crisis in Europe, it is that it has launched an avalanche of ideas about how better to respond in a spirit of solidarity and responsibility sharing. Most of these ideas are not new. What will be new, if it happens, is how they are pieced together and then acted upon in a coherent and coordinated manner.

What has yet to emerge is the leadership necessary to build this coordination effectively and beyond Europe, for this is truly a global crisis, not that of one or several regions to bear.

A lot of hope has been placed in regional protection. This argument has, though, greater force in some regions than others. Even in Europe, where one might have thought that the EU and a regional approach would be synonymous, countries are struggling to coordinate their approaches.

Closer to home, one can say with certainty that Australia's current vision for where and how to build regional protection structures is not the model to follow. Whatever has been said about it being driven by the protection of lives, it is quite clear that the overriding motive has been deterrence. As many have already had good cause to observe, if the boats are fewer, this has been achieved by substituting one set of problems with another.

The offshore processing centres on Nauru and Manus Island have become long-term and deeply troubled detention centres. There are people in them whose mental health gets worse by the day. The resettlement alternatives are not viable for the majority, meaning that these unfortunate people are in practice Australia's long-term responsibility, at exorbitant cost. Domestically the policies are hugely divisive. They have had to be underpinned by a swathe of highly contestable laws that are inconsistent with liberal legal traditions and international responsibilities

The danger is also there that such regrettable practices will infect the main, relevant regional process, the Bali Process on Transnational Crime and People Smuggling, whose embrace of asylum and refugee protection is still rudimentary.

As desperate as the current situation is, if the repercussions of Paris can be properly managed, it may yet prove a rare opportunity to build upon the still solid foundations of the 1951 Refugee Convention. It is not what is in the Convention that it is the problem.

The Convention was not drafted to be a migration control instrument and cannot be held to account for any failures in this regard. It was intended to serve as a refugee protection instrument, and still indisputably and crucially does so for millions of people. This is not to say, however, that it cannot be added to. The absence of agreement around what burden and responsibility-sharing should actually lead to has been a serious loophole in the protection architecture and the opportunity to remedy this now has at least a fighting chance.

Erika Feller is a Vice Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Melbourne and a former Assistant High Commissioner (Protection) at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.