In international law, a stateless person is someone who is "not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law". Some stateless people are also refugees. However, not all refugees are stateless, and many people who are stateless have never crossed an international border. At the end of 2022, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated 4.4 million people worldwide as either stateless or of undetermined nationality, 90,800 (+2%) more than at the end of 2021.
German 1954 Convention Travel Document
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