What is a Refugee? Definition and Meaning (2024)

FAQs

What is a Refugee? Definition and Meaning? ›

Who is a refugee? A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.

Refugees are people 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.

Under United States law, a refugee is someone who: Is located outside of the United States. Is of special humanitarian concern to the United States. Demonstrates that they were persecuted or fear persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.

Their shared roots go all the way back to Latin, but refugee came directly from the French word réfugié with a very specific meaning: it referred to Protestants who fled France following the revocation in 1685 of the Edict of Nantes, the law that granted religious liberty and civil rights to the Protestant Huguenots ...

refugee (noun as in person running from something, often oppression) Strongest matches. alien displaced person emigrant evacuee exile expatriate foreigner.

Refugees are people who must leave their home area for their own safety or survival. Thousands of Cambodians became refugees as they fled the political oppression of the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s and 1980s.

The main difference is choice. Simply speaking, a migrant is someone who chooses to move, and a refugee is someone who has been forced from their home.

While every refugee is initially an asylum seeker, not every asylum seeker will ultimately be recognized as a refugee. That's because the right to be recognized as a refugee is determined by law after an asylum seeker has applied for protection in the country of refuge.

If you were granted asylum in the USA or Europe, will they give you a house or an apartment? No. You get asylum, and that's all. The government is not going to give you a free place to live, or free food, or free anything.

Refugee status is a form of protection that may be granted to people who meet the definition of refugee and who are of special humanitarian concern to the United States. Refugees are generally people outside of their country who are unable or unwilling to return home because they fear serious harm.

What are 3 facts about refugees? ›

76% of refugees are hosted in low or middle-income countries. 70% of refugees live in neighboring countries. The Biden Administration set an annual refugee cap allowing 125,000 refugees to be resettled in the U.S. in fiscal year 2022 and fiscal year 2023.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, formed in 1950 to help people displaced by World War II, plays a significant role in helping determine if a person qualifies as a refugee.

“Asylee” is the term used in the U.S. for people who have been granted asylum. Under U.S. immigration law, a person granted asylum is legally allowed to remain in the country without fear of deportation. They qualify to work and travel abroad and can apply for their spouse or children under the age of 21 to join them.

Butner argues that Jesus largely satisfies the contemporary legal definition of a refugee, but it's debatable whether the journey to Egypt took him “outside of his country of origin,” since Egypt and Bethlehem were both part of the Roman Empire.

Refugee definitions: Migrants | Asylum seekers | Internationally displaced persons | Stateless persons.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and Türkiye each hosted 3.4 million refugees, the largest populations worldwide. Germany was third with 2.5 million, followed by Colombia with slightly less than 2.5 million, including other people in need of international protection. Pakistan hosted 2.1 million refugees.

Refugee. Someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence.