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A refugee, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is a person "forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country. They are unable to return to their own country because of feared persecution as a result of who they are, what they believe in or say, or because of armed conflict, violence or serious public disorder." Such a person may be called an asylum seeker until granted refugee status by a contracting state or by the UNHCR if they formally make a claim for asylum.
Internally Displaced People (IDPs) are often called refugees, but they are distinguished from refugees because they have not crossed an international border, although their reasons for leaving their home may be the same as those of refugees.
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; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.
In 1967 the definition was basically confirmed by the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.
People fleeing from war, natural disasters, or poverty are generally not encompassed by the international right of asylum. However, many countries have implemented laws to protect these Displaced Persons also. Accordingly, the Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa expanded the 1951 definition, which the Organization of African Unity adopted in 1969:
Every person who, owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or the whole of his country of origin or nationality, is compelled to leave his place of habitual residence in order to seek refuge in another place outside his country of origin or nationality.
The 1984 the regional, non-binding Latin-American Cartagena Declaration on Refugees included the following definition of refugees:
persons who have fled their country because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order.
As of 2011 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) itself, in addition to the 1951 definition, recognizes the following persons as refugees:
who are outside their country of nationality or habitual residence and unable to return there owing to serious and indiscriminate threats to life, physical integrity or freedom resulting from generalized violence or events seriously disturbing public order.
The European Union passed minimum standards as part of its definition of "refugee", underlined by article 2 (c) of Directive No. 2004/83/EC, essentially reproducing the narrow definition of refugee offered by the UN 1951 Convention. Nevertheless, by virtue of articles 2 (e) and 15 of the same Directive, persons who have fled a war-caused generalized violence are, under certain conditions, eligible for a complementary form of protection, called subsidiary protection. The same form of protection is foreseen for displaced people who, without being refugees, are nevertheless exposed, if returned to their countries of origin, to the death penalty, torture, or other inhuman or degrading treatments.
The term refugee relocation refers to "a non‐organized process of individual transfer to another country."
Refugee settlement refers to "the process of basic adjustment to life ‒ often in the early stages of transition to the new country ‒ including securing access to housing, education, healthcare, documentation and legal rights and employment is sometimes included in this process, but the focus is generally on short‐term survival needs rather than long‐term career planning."
Refugee integration means "a dynamic, long‐term process in which a newcomer becomes a full and equal participant in the receiving society... Compared to the general construct of settlement, refugee integration has a greater focus on social, cultural and structural dimensions. This process includes the acquisition of legal rights, mastering the language and culture, reaching safety and stability, developing social connections and establishing the means and markers of integration, such as employment, housing and health."
Refugee workforce integration is understood to be "a process in which refugees engage in economic activities (employment or self‐employment) which are commensurate with individuals' professional goals and previous qualifications and experience, and provide adequate economic security and prospects for career advancement."
The term "refugee" sometimes applies to people who might fit the definition outlined by the 1951 Convention, were it applied retroactively. There are many candidates. For example, after the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685 outlawed Protestantism in France, hundreds of thousands of fled to England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, South Africa, Germany and Prussia. The repeated waves of that swept Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries prompted mass Jewish emigration (more than 2 million Russian Jews emigrated in the period 1881–1920). Between the Crimean War of 1853–56 and World War I, at least 2.5 million Muslims arrived in the Ottoman Empire as refugees, primarily from Russia and the Balkans. The Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 caused 800,000 people to leave their homes. Various groups of people were officially designated refugees beginning in World War I. However, when the First World War began, there were no rules in international law specifically dealing with the situation of refugees.
In 1923, the mandate of the commission was expanded to include the more than one million Armenian people who left Turkey Asia Minor in 1915 and 1923 due to a series of events now known as the Armenian genocide. Over the next several years, the mandate was expanded further to cover Assyrian people and Turkish refugees. In all of these cases, a refugee was defined as a person in a group for which the League of Nations had approved a mandate, as opposed to a person to whom a general definition applied.
The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey involved about two million people (around 1.5 million Anatolian Greeks and 500,000 Muslims in Greece) most of whom were forcibly repatriated and denaturalized from homelands of centuries or millennia (and guaranteed the nationality of the destination country) by a treaty promoted and overseen by the international community as part of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923).
The U.S. Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924. The Immigration Act of 1924 was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially Jews, Italians and Slavs, who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s. Most European refugees (principally Jews and Slavs) fleeing the Nazis and the Soviet Union were barred from going to the United States until after World War II, when Congress enacted the temporary Displaced Persons Act in 1948.
In 1930, the Nansen International Office for Refugees (Nansen Office) was established as a successor agency to the commission. Its most notable achievement was the Nansen passport, a refugee travel document, for which it was awarded the 1938 Nobel Peace Prize. The Nansen Office was plagued by problems of financing, an increase in refugee numbers, and a lack of co-operation from some member states, which led to mixed success overall.
However, the Nansen Office managed to lead fourteen nations to ratify the 1933 Refugee Convention, an early, and relatively modest, attempt at a human rights charter, and in general assisted around one million refugees worldwide.
The mandate of the High Commission was subsequently expanded to include persons from Austria and Sudetenland, which Germany annexed after 1 October 1938 in accordance with the Munich Agreement. According to the Institute for Refugee Assistance, the actual count of refugees from Czechoslovakia on 1 March 1939 stood at almost 150,000. Between 1933 and 1939, about 200,000 Jews fleeing Nazism were able to find refuge in France, while at least 55,000 Jews were able to find refuge in Palestine before the British authorities closed that destination in 1939.
On 31 December 1938 both the Nansen Office and High Commission were dissolved and replaced by the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees under the Protection of the League. This coincided with the flight of 500,000 Spanish Republicans, soldiers as well as civilians, to France after their defeat by the Nationalists in 1939 in the Spanish Civil War.
The conflict and political instability during World War II led to massive numbers of refugees (see World War II evacuation and expulsion). In 1943, the Allies of World War II created the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) to provide aid to areas liberated from Axis powers of World War II, including parts of Europe and China. By the end of the War, Europe had more than 40 million refugees. UNRRA was involved in returning over seven million refugees, then commonly referred to as or DPs, to their country of origin and setting up displaced persons camps for one million refugees who refused to be repatriated. Even two years after the end of War, some 850,000 people still lived in DP camps across Western Europe. DP Camps in Europe Intro , from: DPs Europe's Displaced Persons, 1945–1951 by Mark Wyman After the establishment of Israel in 1948, Israel accepted more than 650,000 Jewish refugees by 1950. By 1953, over 250,000 refugees were still in Europe, most of them old, infirm, crippled, or otherwise disabled.
In the last months of World War II, about five million German civilians from the German provinces of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia fled the advance of the Red Army from the east and became refugees in Mecklenburg, Brandenburg and Saxony. Since the spring of 1945, the Poles had been forcefully expelling the remaining German population in these provinces. When the Allies met in Potsdam on 17 July 1945 at the Potsdam Conference, a chaotic refugee situation faced the occupying powers. The Potsdam Agreement, Article VIII signed on 2 August 1945, defined the Polish western border as that of 1937, Agreements of the Berlin (Potsdam) Conference placing one fourth of Germany's territory under the Provisional Polish administration. Article XII ordered that the remaining German populations in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary be transferred west in an "orderly and humane" manner. Although not approved by Allies at Potsdam, hundreds of thousands of living in Yugoslavia and Romania were deported to slave labour in the Soviet Union, to Allied-occupied Germany, and subsequently to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Austria and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). This entailed the largest population transfer in history. In all 15 million Germans were affected, and more than two million perished during the expulsions of the German population. (See Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950).) Between the end of War and the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, more than 563,700 refugees from East Germany traveled to West Germany for asylum from the Soviet occupation.
During the same period, millions of former Russian citizens were forcefully repatriated against their will into the USSR. On 11 February 1945, at the conclusion of the Yalta Conference, the United States and United Kingdom signed a Repatriation Agreement with the USSR. The interpretation of this Agreement resulted in the forcible repatriation of all Soviets regardless of their wishes. When the war ended in May 1945, British and United States civilian authorities ordered their military forces in Europe to deport to the Soviet Union millions of former residents of the USSR, including many persons who had left Russia and established different citizenship decades before. The forced repatriation operations took place from 1945 to 1947. At the end of World War II, there were more than 5 million "displaced persons" from the Soviet Union in Western Europe. About 3 million had been forced laborers () in Germany and occupied territories. The Soviet POWs and the Andrey Vlasov men were put under the jurisdiction of SMERSH (Death to Spies). Of the 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war captured by the Germans, 3.5 million had died while in German captivity by the end of the war. The survivors on their return to the USSR were treated as traitors (see Order No. 270).James D. Morrow, "The Institutional Features of the Prisoners of War Treaties," International Organization 55, no. 4 (2001), 984 Over 1.5 million surviving Red Army soldiers imprisoned by the Nazis were sent to the Gulag.
Poland and Soviet Ukraine conducted population exchanges following the imposition of a new Poland-Soviet border at the Curzon Line in 1944. About 2,100,000 Polish people were expelled west of the new border (see Repatriation of Poles), while about 450,000 Ukrainians were expelled to the east of the new border. The population transfer to Soviet Ukraine occurred from September 1944 to May 1946 (see Repatriation of Ukrainians). A further 200,000 Ukrainians left southeast Poland more or less voluntarily between 1944 and 1945.
According to the report of the U.S. Committee for Refugees (1995), 10 to 15 percent of 7.5 million Azerbaijani population were refugees or displaced people. Most of them were 228,840 refugee people of Azerbaijan who fled from Armenia in 1988 as a result of deportation policy of Armenia against ethnic Azerbaijanis.
During the 1948 Palestine War, some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs or 85% of the Palestinian Arab population of territories that became Israel fled or were expelled from their homes by the Israelis.
The International Refugee Organization (IRO) was founded on 20 April 1946, and took over the functions of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which was shut down in 1947. While the handover was originally planned to take place at the beginning of 1947, it did not occur until July 1947. The International Refugee Organization was a temporary organization of the United Nations (UN), which itself had been founded in 1945, with a mandate to largely finish the UNRRA's work of repatriating or resettling European refugees. It was dissolved in 1952 after resettling about one million refugees. The definition of a refugee at this time was an individual with either a Nansen passport or a "certificate of identity" issued by the International Refugee Organization.
The Constitution of the International Refugee Organization, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 15 December 1946, specified the agency's field of operations. Controversially, this defined "persons of German ethnic origin" who had been expelled, or were to be expelled from their countries of birth into the postwar Germany, as individuals who would "not be the concern of the Organization." This excluded from its purview a group that exceeded in number all the other European displaced persons put together. Also, because of disagreements between the Western allies and the Soviet Union, the IRO only worked in areas controlled by Western armies of occupation.
The emergence of refugee studies as a distinct field of study has been criticized by scholars due to terminological difficulty. Since no universally accepted definition for the term "refugee" exists, the academic respectability of the policy-based definition, as outlined in the 1951 Refugee Convention, is disputed. Additionally, academics have critiqued the lack of a theoretical basis of refugee studies and dominance of policy-oriented research. In response, scholars have attempted to steer the field toward establishing a theoretical groundwork of refugee studies through "situating studies of particular refugee (and other forced migrant) groups in the theories of cognate areas (and major disciplines), providing an opportunity to use the particular circumstances of refugee situations to illuminate these more general theories and thus participate in the development of social science, rather than leading refugee studies into an intellectual cul-de-sac." Thus, the term refugee in the context of refugee studies can be referred to as "legal or descriptive rubric", encompassing socioeconomic backgrounds, personal histories, psychological analyses, and spiritualities.
The United Nations defines Palestinian refugees as "persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict."
The population of Palestinian refugees continues to grow due to multiple UNRWA reclassifications of what is considered to be a refugee. "In 1965, UNRWA changed the eligibility requirements to be a Palestinian refugee to include third-generation descendants, and in 1982, it extended it again, to include all descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, regardless of whether they had been granted citizenship elsewhere. This classification process is inconsistent with how all other refugees in the world are classified, including the definition used by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the laws concerning refugees in the United States."
Another refugee wave started in 1967 after the Six-day-War, where mostly Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank were victims of displacement. According to the United Nations, Palestinian refugees struggle with access to health care, food, clean water, sanitation, environmental health and infrastructure, education, and technology. According to the report, food, shelter, and environmental health are a human's basic needs. United Nations agency UNRWA (The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) focuses on addressing these issues to relieve Palestinians from any harm. UNRWA was established as a temporary agency that would carry out a humanitarian response mandate for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.
The responsibilities for the assistance for protection for Palestinian refugees and human development were originally left to the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP). This agency failed to function, which led the agency to stop working. (2025). 9780415715041, Routledge, Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780415715041 UNRWA took over these responsibilities and expanded their mandate from just humanitarian emergency relief to including human development and protection of the Palestinian society. Communication with host countries where UNRWA is operating (Syria, Jordan and Lebanon) is very important as the agency's mandate changes per region. UNRWA's Medium Term Strategy is a report that lists all the issues that the Palestinians are facing and UNRWA's plan to mitigate the severeness of the issues. The report shows that UNRWA focuses mostly on food assistance, health care, education and shelter for Palestinian refugees. UNRWA has succeeded in placing over 700 schools with over 500,000 students, 140 health centers, 113 women community centers, and has awarded over 475,000 loans. UNRWA's funding relies mostly on voluntary donations. Fluctuations in these donations result in constraints in carrying out the mandate.
To receive refugee status, a person must have applied for asylum, making them—while waiting for a decision—an asylum seeker. However, a displaced person otherwise legally entitled to refugee status may never apply for asylum, or may not be allowed to apply in the country they fled to and thus may not have official asylum seeker status.
Once a displaced person is granted refugee status they enjoy certain rights as agreed in the 1951 Refugee convention. Not all countries have signed and ratified this convention and some countries do not have a legal procedure for dealing with asylum seekers.
do not need to apply for asylum on arrival in the third countries as they already went through the UNHCR refugee status determination process whilst being in the first country of asylum and this is usually accepted by the third countries.
There is no specific method mandated for RSD (apart from the commitment to the 1951 Refugee Convention) and it is subject to the overall efficacy of the country's internal administrative and judicial system as well as the characteristics of the refugee flow to which the country responds. This lack of a procedural direction could create a situation where political and strategic interests override humanitarian considerations in the RSD process. There are also no fixed interpretations of the elements in the 1951 Refugee Convention and countries may interpret them differently (see also refugee roulette).
However, in 2013, the UNHCR conducted them in more than 50 countries and co-conducted them parallel to or jointly with governments in another 20 countries, which made it the second largest RSD body in the world The UNHCR follows a set of guidelines described in the Handbook and Guidelines on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status to determine which individuals are eligible for refugee status.
The principle of non-refoulement is a principle of customary international law, binding on states regardless of treaty obligations. It is also grounded in Article 33 of the Refugee Convention, Article 3 of the Convention against Torture, and Articles 6, 7, and 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The prohibition against returning a person to a place where they risk facing torture, persecution, or other serious harm is absolute, meaning states cannot use national security or public order as reasons to violate it. The principle of non-refoulement applies to expulsions or returns in any manner, covering both direct and indirect measures. This includes the prohibition of indirect, chain, or secondary refoulement, which means a person should not be deported to a state from which they may face further deportation to a third state where they would be in danger. States are also prohibited from disembarking a refugee in the jurisdiction of another state if they cannot ensure that the refugee would be protected from onward refoulement and treated in accordance with international human rights standards. The principle of non-refoulement is considered a cornerstone of international refugee law and is a fundamental protection against being sent back to a place where one's life or freedom would be threatened. This principle applies to all migrants at all times, regardless of their migration status.
While non-refoulement is a key protection, it does not provide a right to asylum in a specific country. Instead, it ensures that no one is returned to a place where they would be in danger. The right to non-refoulement is distinct from the right to seek asylum, and respecting the right to asylum means that states must not deport genuine refugees. The right to non-refoulement also applies to individuals who may not have formally sought asylum but would still be at risk if returned to their country of origin, and states must be aware of facts that indicate an individual has protection needs. Some countries may try to circumvent non-refoulement by transferring refugees to third countries that are not safe, also called chain or secondary refoulement, which is prohibited. The principle also requires states to ensure that if a refugee is transferred to a third country, that third country will respect the refugee's rights. The principle of non-refoulement is an absolute right, and states cannot justify violating it even in the name of national security or public order.
The principle of non-refoulement prohibits states from transferring or removing from their jurisdiction or effective control when there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be at risk of irreparable harm upon return, including persecution, torture, ill-treatment, or other serious human rights violations. It is a right that applies regardless of whether a person is formally recognized as a refugee and encompasses situations where a person may not have formally sought asylum but would still be at risk if returned to their country of origin. States must be aware of facts that indicate an individual has protection needs, triggering non-refoulement obligations. The principle applies to expulsions or returns "in any manner whatsoever," encompassing both direct and indirect returns. The right to non-refoulement is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that everyone has the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution. Despite international standards, some countries engage in 'pullbacks,' which are measures to prevent people from leaving a country and returning them without allowing them to make asylum claims. Such practices are also a violation of the right to leave a country, as enshrined in the ICCPR.
The principle of non-refoulement extends to situations where a state may be indirectly responsible for refoulement, for instance by returning a person to a country where they are likely to be refouled to a country where they face danger. Some states may attempt to use the concept of 'safe third countries' to transfer refugees, but the receiving country must guarantee protection from persecution and provide access to fair asylum procedures. Non-refoulement is also related to the principle that refugees should not be penalized for their illegal entry or presence if they present themselves without delay to authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that collectively expelling migrants who are prevented from requesting asylum is a violation of their right to be protected from inhuman or degrading treatment. The African Refugee Convention also addresses non-refoulement, stating that no person shall be subjected to measures that would compel them to return to a territory where their life, physical integrity, or liberty would be threatened. Additionally, the African Refugee Convention emphasizes the voluntary nature of repatriation, ensuring that no refugee is repatriated against their will. The convention also prohibits refugees from engaging in subversive activities against any member state of the Organization of African Unity. The Dublin Regulation, which is an EU law, also impacts non-refoulement by outlining procedures for the protection of asylum applicants, including guarantees for minors and the right to appeal transfer decisions, but there are concerns about the application of the 'safe third country' concept. The EU-Turkey deal, for example, has faced criticism due to concerns that Turkey may not be a safe third country for refugees. Some reports indicate that some Syrian asylum-seekers have been forcibly returned to Turkey without access to asylum procedures and despite Greek courts blocking returns.
In the United Kingdom World Refugee Day is celebrated as part of Refugee Week. Refugee Week is a nationwide festival designed to promote understanding and to celebrate the cultural contributions of refugees, and features many events such as music, dance and theatre.
In the Roman Catholic Church, the World Day of Migrants and Refugees is celebrated in January each year, since instituted in 1914 by Pope Pius X.
Protracted displacement can lead to detrimental effects on refugee employment and refugee workforce integration, exacerbating the effect of the canvas ceiling. Protracted displacement leads to skills to atrophy, leading qualifications and experiences to be outdated and incompatible to the changing working environments of receiving countries by the time refugees resettle.
The Overseas Development Institute has found that aid programmes need to move from short-term models of assistance (such as food or cash handouts) to more sustainable long-term programmes that help refugees become more self-reliant. This can involve tackling difficult legal and economic environments, by improving social services, job opportunities and laws.Crawford N. et al. (2015) Protracted displacement: uncertain paths to self-reliance in exile Overseas Development Institute
Among other symptoms, post-traumatic stress disorder involves anxiety, over-alertness, sleeplessness, motor difficulties, failing short term memory, amnesia, nightmares and sleep-paralysis. Flashbacks are characteristic to the disorder: the patient experiences the traumatic event, or pieces of it, again and again. Depression is also characteristic for PTSD-patients and may also occur without accompanying PTSD.
PTSD was diagnosed in 34.1% of Palestinian children, most of whom were refugees, , and working. The participants were 1,000 children aged 12 to 16 years from governmental, private, and United Nations Relief Work Agency UNRWA schools in East Jerusalem and various governorates in the West Bank.
Another study showed that 28.3% of Bosnian refugee women had symptoms of PTSD three or four years after their arrival in Sweden. These women also had significantly higher of symptoms of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress than Swedish-born women. For depression the odds ratio was 9.50 among Bosnian women.
A study by the Department of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine demonstrated that twenty percent of Sudanese refugee minors living in the United States had a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. They were also more likely to have worse scores on all the Child Health Questionnaire subscales.
In a study for the United Kingdom, refugees were found to be 4 percentage points more likely to report a mental health problem compared to the non-immigrant population. This contrasts with the results for other immigrant groups, which were less likely to report a mental health problem compared to the non-immigrant population.
Many more studies illustrate the problem. One meta-study was conducted by the psychiatry department of Oxford University at Warneford Hospital in the United Kingdom. Twenty surveys were analyzed, providing results for 6,743 adult refugees from seven countries. In the larger studies, 9% were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and 5% with major depression, with evidence of much psychiatric co-morbidity. Five surveys of 260 refugee children from three countries yielded a prevalence of 11% for post-traumatic stress disorder. According to this study, refugees resettled in Western countries could be about ten times more likely to have PTSD than age-matched general populations in those countries. Worldwide, tens of thousands of refugees and former refugees resettled in Western countries probably have post-traumatic stress disorder.
The refugee camps were built near rivers or irrigation sites had higher malaria prevalence than refugee camps built on dry lands. The location of the camps lent themselves to better breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and thus a higher likelihood of malaria transmission. Children aged 1–15 were the most susceptible to malaria infection, which is a significant cause of mortality in children younger than 5. Malaria was the cause of 16% of the deaths in refugee children younger than 5 years of age. Malaria is one of the most commonly reported causes of death in refugees and displaced persons. Since 2014, reports of malaria cases in Germany had doubled compared to previous years, with the majority of cases found in refugees from Eritrea.
The World Health Organization recommends that all people in areas that are endemic for malaria use long-lasting insecticide nets. A cohort study found that within refugee camps in Pakistan, insecticide treated bed nets were very useful in reducing malaria cases. A single treatment of the nets with the insecticide permethrin remained protective throughout the 6 month transmission season.
In Canada, barriers to healthcare access include the lack of adequately trained physicians, complex medical conditions of some refugees and the bureaucracy of medical coverage. There are also individual barriers to access such as language and transportation barriers, institutional barriers such as bureaucratic burdens and lack of entitlement knowledge, and systems level barriers such as conflicting policies, racism and physician workforce shortage.
In the US, all officially designated Iraqi refugees had health insurance coverage compared to a little more than half of non-Iraqi immigrants in a Dearborn, Michigan, study. However, greater barriers existed around transportation, language and successful stress coping mechanisms for refugees versus other immigrants, in addition, refugees noted greater medical conditions. The study also found that refugees had higher healthcare utilization rate (92.1%) as compared to the US overall population (84.8%) and immigrants (58.6%) in the study population.
Within Australia, officially designated refugees who qualify for temporary protection and offshore humanitarian refugees are eligible for health assessments, interventions and access to health insurance schemes and trauma-related counseling services. Despite being eligible to access services, barriers include economic constraints around perceived and actual costs carried by refugees. In addition, refugees must cope with a healthcare workforce unaware of the unique health needs of refugee populations. Perceived legal barriers such as fear that disclosing medical conditions prohibiting reunification of family members and current policies which reduce assistance programs may also limit access to health care services.
Providing access to healthcare for refugees through integration into the current health systems of host countries may also be difficult when operating in a resource limited setting. In this context, barriers to healthcare access may include political aversion in the host country and already strained capacity of the existing health system. Political aversion to refugee access into the existing health system may stem from the wider issue of refugee resettlement. One approach to limiting such barriers is to move from a parallel administrative system in which UNHCR refugees may receive better healthcare than host nationals but is unsustainable financially and politically to that of an integrated care where refugee and host nationals receive equal and more improved care all around. In the 1980s, Pakistan attempted to address Afghan refugee healthcare access through the creation of Basic Health Units inside the camps. Funding cuts closed many of these programs, forcing refugees to seek healthcare from the local government. In response to a protracted refugee situation in the West Nile district, Ugandan officials with UNHCR created an integrative healthcare model for the mostly Sudanese refugee population and Ugandan citizens. Local nationals now access health care in facilities initially created for refugees.
One potential argument for limiting refugee access to healthcare is associated with costs with states desire to decrease health expenditure burdens. However, Germany found that restricting refugee access led to an increase actual expenditures relative to refugees which had full access to healthcare services. The legal restrictions on access to health care and the administrative barriers in Germany have been criticized since the 1990s for leading to delayed care, for increasing direct costs and administrative costs of health care, and for shifting the responsibility for care from the less expensive primary care sector to costly treatments for acute conditions in the secondary and tertiary sector.
Large groups of displaced persons could be abused as "weapons" to threaten political enemies or neighbouring countries. It is for this reason amongst others that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10 aims to facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible mobility of people through planned and well-managed migration policies.
Concerns about human trafficking and sexual violence have been realized during the 2022–present Ukrainian refugee crisis. European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said: "We have some indications on online services that the demand for Ukrainian women for sexual purposes has gone up." According to USA Today, "there has been a skyrocketing increase in all forms of illegal trafficking of women and girls in the region – and also boys – including forced sex and labor, prostitution, pornography and other forms of sexual exploitation... In recent weeks, online searches for Ukrainian women and keywords like escorts, porn or sex have shot up dramatically in European countries, according to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)."
Historically, refugee populations have often been portrayed as a security threat. In the U.S and Europe, there has been much focus on a narrative whereby terrorists maintain networks amongst transnational, refugee, and migrant populations. This fear has been exaggerated into a modern-day Islamist terrorism Trojan Horse in which terrorists allegedly hide among refugees and penetrate host countries. 'Muslim-refugee-as-an-enemy-within' rhetoric is relatively new, but the underlying scapegoating of out-groups for domestic societal problems, fears and ethno-nationalist sentiment is not new. In the 1890s, the influx of Eastern European Jewish refugees to London coupled with the rise of anarchism in the city led to a confluence of threat-perception and fear of the refugee out-group. Populist rhetoric then too propelled debate over migration control and protecting national security.
Cross-national empirical verification, or rejection, of populist suspicion and fear of refugees' threat to national security and terror-related activities is relatively scarce. Case-studies suggest that the threat of an Islamist refugee Trojan Horse is highly exaggerated. Of the 800,000 refugees vetted through the resettlement program in the United States between 2001 and 2016, only five were subsequently arrested on terrorism charges; and 17 of the 600,000 Iraqis and Syrians who arrived in Germany in 2015 were investigated for terrorism. One study found that European tend to be 'homegrown': over 90% were residents of a European country and 60% had European citizenship. - Citing Edwin Bakker, Jihadi Terrorists in Europe: Their Characteristics and the Circumstances in which they Joined the Jihad. Issue 2 of Clingendael security paper, Nederlands Instituut voor Internationale Betrekkingen Clingendael (The Hague: Netherlands Institute of International Relations, 2006), 36–7. ISBN 9789050311137. While the statistics do not support the rhetoric, a PEW Research Center survey of ten European countries (Hungary, Poland, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Greece, UK, France, and Spain) released on 11 July 2016, finds that majorities (ranging from 52% to 76%) of respondents in eight countries (Hungary, Poland, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Greece, and UK) think refugees increase the likelihood of terrorism in their country.Wike, Richard, Bruce Stokes, and Katie Simmons. "Europeans fear wave of refugees will mean more terrorism, fewer jobs." Pew Research Center 11 (2016). Since 1975, in the U.S., the risk of dying in a terror attack by a refugee is 1 in 3.6 billion per year; whereas the odds of dying in a motor vehicle crash are 1 in 113; by state sanctioned execution: 1 in 111,439; or by dog attack: 1 in 114,622.
In Europe, fear of immigration, Islamification and job and welfare-benefits competition has fueled an increase in violence. Immigrants are perceived as a threat to ethno-nationalist identity and increase concerns over criminality and insecurity.
In the PEW survey previously referenced, 50% of respondents saw refugees as a burden due to job and social-benefit competition. When Sweden received over 160,000 asylum seekers in 2015, the influx was accompanied by 50 attacks against asylum-seekers, which was more than four times the number of attacks that occurred in the previous four years. At the incident level, the 2011 Utøya Norway terror attack by Breivik demonstrates the impact of this threat perception on a country's risk from domestic terrorism, in particular ethno-nationalist extremism. Breivik portrayed himself as a protector of Norwegian ethnic identity and national security, fighting against (alleged) immigrant criminality, competition and welfare-abuse and an Islamic takeover.
Contrary to popular concerns that refugees commit crime, a more empirically grounded concern is that refugees are at high risk of being targets of anti-refugee violence. According to a 2018 study in the Journal of Peace Research, states often resort to anti-refugee violence in response to terrorist attacks or to security crises. The study notes that there is evidence to suggest that "the repression of refugees is more consistent with a scapegoating mechanism than the actual ties and involvement of refugees in terrorism".
In 2018, US president Donald Trump made some comments about refugees and immigrants in Sweden; he stated that the high numbers of crimes are because of refugees and immigrants.
Alexander Betts highlights the phenomenon of refugees as "indicative of a breakdown of the [[nation-state]] system".
Aside from students, teachers and school staff also face their own obstacles in working with refugee students. They have concerns about their ability to meet the mental, physical, emotional, and educational needs of students. One study of newly arrived Bantu students from Somalia in a Chicago school questioned whether schools were equipped to provide them with a quality education that met the needs of the pupils. The students were not aware of how to use pencils, which caused them to break the tips requiring frequent sharpening. Teachers may even see refugee students as different from other immigrant groups, as was the case with the Bantu pupils.Birman, D., & Tran, N. (2015). The Academic Engagement of Newly Arriving Somali Bantu Students in a U.S. Elementary School. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute. Teachers may sometimes feel that their work is made harder because of the pressures to meet state requirements for testing. With refugee children falling behind or struggling to catch up, it can overwhelm teachers and administrators, further leading to anger.
Not all students adjust the same way to their new setting. One student may take only three months, while others may take four years. One study found that even in their fourth year of schooling, Lao and Vietnamese refugee students in the US were still in a transitional status.Liem Thanh Nguyen, & Henkin, A. (1980). Reconciling Differences: Indochinese Refugee Students in American Schools . The Clearinghouse, 54(3), 105–108. Refugee students continue to encounter difficulties throughout their years in schools that can hinder their ability to learn. Furthermore, to provide proper support, educators must consider the experiences of students before they settled the US.
In their first settlement countries, refugee students may encounter negative experiences with education that they can carry with them post settlement. For example:
Statistics found that in places such as Uganda and Kenya, there were gaps in refugee students attending schools. It found that 80% of refugees in Uganda were attending schools, whereas only 46% of students were attending schools in Kenya. Furthermore, for secondary levels, the numbers were much lower. There was only 1.4% of refugee students attending schools in Malaysia. This trend is evident across several first settlement countries and carry negative impacts on students once they arrive to their permanent settlement homes, such as the US, and have to navigate a new education system. Some refugees do not have a chance to attend schools in their first settlement countries because they are considered undocumented immigrants in places like Malaysia for Rohingya refugees. In other cases, such as Burundians in Tanzania, refugees can get more access to education while in displacement than in their home countries.
Various websites contain resources that can help school staff better learn to work with refugee students such as Bridging Refugee Youth and Children's Services . With the support of educators and the school community, education can help rebuild the academic, social, and emotional well-being of refugee students who have suffered from past and present trauma, Social exclusion, and social alienation.
In addition, because of the differences in language and culture, students are often placed in lower classes due to their lack of English proficiency. Students can also be made to repeat classes because of their lack of English proficiency, even if they have mastered the content of the class. When schools have the resources and are able to provide separate classes for refugee students to develop their English skills, it can take the average refugee students only three months to catch up with their peers. This was the case with Somali refugees at some primary schools in Nairobi.
The histories of refugee students are often hidden from educators, resulting in cultural misunderstandings. However, when teachers, school staff, and peers help refugee students develop a positive cultural identity, it can help buffer the negative effects refugees' experiences have on them, such as poor academic performance, isolation, and discrimination.
In 2006, there were 8.4 million UNHCR registered refugees worldwide, the lowest number since 1980. At the end of 2015, there were 16.1 million refugees worldwide. When adding the 5.2 million Palestinian refugees who are under UNRWA's mandate there were 21.3 million refugees worldwide. The overall forced displacement worldwide has reached a total of 65.3 million displaced persons at the end of 2015, while it was 59.5 million 12 months earlier. One in every 113 people globally is an asylum seeker or a refugee. In 2015, the total number of displaced people worldwide, including refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons, was at its highest level on record.
Among them, Syrian refugees were the largest group in 2015 at 4.9 million. In 2014, Syrians had overtaken Afghan refugees (2.7 million), who had been the largest refugee group for three decades. Somalis were the third largest group with one million. The countries hosting the largest number of refugees according to UNHCR were Turkey (2.5 million), Pakistan (1.6 million), Lebanon (1.1 million) and Iran (1 million). the countries that had the largest numbers of internally displaced people were Colombia at 6.9, Syria at 6.6 million and Iraq at 4.4 million.
Children were 51% of refugees in 2015 and most of them were separated from their parents or travelling alone. In 2015, 86% of the refugees under UNHCR's mandate were in low and middle-income countries that themselves are close to situations of conflict. Refugees have historically tended to flee to nearby countries with ethnic kin populations and a history of accepting other co-ethnic refugees. The religion, and denominational affiliation has been an important feature of debate in refugee-hosting nations.
An ongoing refugee crisis began in Europe in late February 2022 after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Over 8.2 million refugees fleeing Ukraine have been recorded across Europe, while an estimated 8 million others had been displaced within the country by late May 2022.
| Refugees and people in refugee-like situations by region between 2008 and 2022
! scope="col" style="width: 110px;" | Region (UN major area) !2022 !2021 !2020 !2019 ! 2018 ! 2017 ! 2016 ! 2014 ! 2013 ! 2012 ! 2011 ! 2010 ! 2009 ! 2008 | |||||
| Africa | 7,545,579 | 7,483,184 | 7,064,848 | 6,803,799 | 6,775,502 | 2,332,900 |
| Asia | 12,271,919 | 9,845,603 | 9,753,909 | 9,892,341 | 10,111,523 | 5,706,400 |
| Europe | 8,728,098 | 3,189,403 | 3,000,709 | 2,958,113 | 2,760,771 | 1,613,400 |
| Latin America and the Caribbean | 292,860 | 265,306 | 305,887 | 255,501 | 215,924 | 350,300 |
| Northern America | 507,782 | 473,211 | 453,804 | 446,151 | 427,350 | 453,200 |
| Oceania | 66,795 | 70,210 | 71,158 | 89,994 | 69,492 | 33,600 |
| Total | 29,413,033 | 21,326,917 | 20,650,315 | 20,445,899 | 20,360,562 | 10,489,800 |
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