refugee

Throngs of civilian refugees flee the fighting during the Korean War, 1951.

According to international law, a person fleeing from oppressive or dangerous conditions (such as political, religious, or military persecution) and seeking refuge in a foreign country. In 1995 there were an estimated 27 million refugees worldwide; their resettlement and welfare is the responsibility of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). An estimated average of 10,000 people a day become refugees. Women and children make up 75% of all refugees and displaced persons. Many more millions are ‘economic’ or ‘environmental’ refugees, forced to emigrate because of economic circumstances, lack of access to land, or environmental disasters.

The term was originally applied to the French Huguenots who came to England after toleration of Protestantism was withdrawn with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Major refugee movements in 20th-century Europe include: Jews from the pogroms of Russia 1881-1914 and again after the Revolution; White Russians from the USSR after 1917; Jews from Germany and other Nazi-dominated countries 1933-45; the displaced people of World War II; and, from 1991, victims of the civil wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Many Chinese fled the mainland after the communist revolution of 1949, especially to Taiwan and Hong Kong; many Latin Americans fled from Cuba, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Central America when new governments took power; and many boat people left Vietnam after the victory of the North over the South. A United Nations-backed plan to accelerate the repatriation of around 38,000 boat people living in Southeast Asia was announced in January 1996.

Refugee movements created by natural disasters and famine have been widespread, most notably in Ethiopia and Sudan, where civil war has also contributed. Between 1985 and 1989 the number of refugees doubled worldwide, and the Gulf War in 1991 created 1.5 million refugees, though many were later able to return to their homes. During 1994 and 1995 ethnic violence in Burundi and Rwanda, and the practice of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the former Yugoslavia, added to the numbers of refugees needing help from the international community: for example, in June 1996 there were 1.3 million Bosnian refugees distributed across Europe, including 450,000 in Serbia, 350,000 in Germany, 170,000 in Croatia, and 122,000 in Sweden; in November 1996, 750,000 Hutu refugees fled war-torn eastern Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) for Rwanda.

A distinction is usually made by Western nations between ‘political’ refugees and so-called ‘economic’ refugees, who are said to be escaping from poverty rather than persecution, particularly when the refugees come from low-income countries. The latter group often become illegal immigrants. International law recognizes the right of the persecuted to seek asylum but does not oblige states to provide it.

Internally-displaced people, who have been forced to leave their homes but have not crossed their country's borders, are not recognized as refugees; they were estimated to number at least 26 million worldwide in 1995.