Turning back asylum seeker boats is illegal under international law and does not deter people from seeking sanctuary by sea, a new policy brief from the University of New South Wales’s Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law argues. Author of the report, QMUL’s Dr Violeta Moreno-Lax, co-founder of the Centre for European and International Legal Affairs (CEILA), argues that “deterrence policies do not really ‘save lives’. They hamper desperate people fleeing war and persecution from finding safety. If the political will to save lives really existed, then governments in both hemispheres would replace the current securitised approach with a comprehensive, protection-centred vision.”