Refugee
| Total population | |
|---|---|
|
21.3 million (16.1 million under UNHCR's mandate and 5.2 million under UNRWA's mandate) |
|
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Africa | 4.413 million |
| Europe | 4.391 million |
| Asia and the Pacific | 3.830 million |
| Middle East and North Africa | 2.739 million |
| Americas | 746,800 |
21.3 million
A , generally speaking, is a displaced person who has been forced to cross national boundaries and who cannot return home safely (for more detail see legal definition). Such a person may be called an asylum seeker until granted refugee status by the contracting state or the UNHCR if they formally make a claim for asylum.
The lead international agency coordinating refugee protection is the United Nations Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The United Nations have a second Office for refugees, which is the UNRWA. This however is solely responsible for supporting Palestinian refugees.
Although similar terms in other languages have described an event marking large scale migration of a specific population from a place of origin, such as the biblical account of Israelites fleeing from Assyrian conquest (circa 740 BCE), in English, the term refugee derives from the root word refuge, from Old French refuge, meaning "hiding place". It refers to "shelter or protection from danger or distress", from Latin fugere, "to flee", and refugium, "a taking [of] refuge, place to flee back to". In Western history, the term was first applied to French Huguenots, after the Edict of Fontainebleau (1540), who again migrated from France after the Edict of Nantes revocation (1685). The word meant "one seeking asylum," until around 1914, when it evolved to mean "one fleeing home", applied in this instance to civilians in Flanders heading west to escape fighting in World War I.
Following World War II and in response to the large numbers of people fleeing Eastern Europe, the UN 1951 Refugee Convention adopted the following definition of "refugee" to apply to any person who (in Article 1.A.2):
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