A refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for internally displaced people. Usually, refugees seek asylum after they have escaped war in their home countries, but some camps also house environmental and economic migrants. Camps with over a hundred thousand people are common, but as of 2012, the average-sized camp housed around 11,400. They are usually built and run by a government, the United Nations, international organizations, or non-governmental organization. Unofficial refugee camps, such as Idomeni in Greece or the Calais jungle in France, are where refugees are largely left without the support of governments or international organizations.
Kiziba refugee camp in the west of Rwanda, 2014
Refugee camp in Beirut, c. 1920–25
Refugee camp (located in present-day eastern Congo-Kinshasa) for Rwandans following the Rwandan genocide of 1994
A camp in Guinea for refugees from Sierra Leone
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