A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a person who has lost the protection of their country of origin and who cannot or is unwilling to return there due to well-founded fear of persecution. Such a person may be called an asylum seeker until granted refugee status by the contracting state or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) if they formally make a claim for asylum.
Konrad Schumann, an East German border guard, fleeing East Germany towards West Germany in 1962
Darfur refugee camp in Chad, 2005
Refugees from Herzegovina, painting by Uroš Predić in 1889 made in the aftermath of the Herzegovina Uprising (1875–77)
Turkish refugees from Edirne, 1913
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to a third country. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with over 18,879 staff working in 138 countries as of 2020.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
UNHCR packages containing tents, tarps, and mosquito netting sit in a field in Dadaab, Kenya, on 11 December 2006, following disastrous flooding
UNHCR 50th anniversary. Stamp of Tajikistan, 2001.
