182 UNITED NATIONS AT A GLANCE
“go-and-see” follow-up visits and provides safety information while engaging in community reconciliation activities and providing legal aid. Refugees who cannot return home often locally integrate into host societies or resettle in a third country. In such cases, UNHCR supports integration programmes, such as cultural orientation, language and vocational training, and offers legal advice as well as psychological support to ensure that people are well integrated.
FOCUS ON
people of concern: forcibly displaced PERSONS Refugees »» A refugee is someone who fled his or her home and country owing to “a wellfounded fear of persecution because of his/her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion”, according to the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention. Many refugees are in exile to escape the effects of natural or human-made disasters. There are 10.4 million refugees of concern to the UNHCR today, more than half in Asia and some 20 per cent in Africa. Asylum seeker »» Asylum seekers say they are refugees and have fled their homes as refugees do, but their claim to refugee status is not yet definitively evaluated in the country to which they fled. UNHCR’s recent reports reveal that a total of 358,800 asylum seekers lodged their asylum applications in 2011. This is nearly half of the 620,000 applications filed a decade ago, in 2001. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) »» IDPs are people who have not crossed an international border but have moved to a different region than the one they call home within their own country. There are an estimated 15.6 million IDPs under the concern of the UNHCR in 22 countries, including Sudan, Colombia and Iraq, the three countries with the largest IDP populations. Stateless persons »» Stateless persons do not have a recognized nationality and do not belong to any country. There are approximately 12 million stateless people across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe. Statelessness situations are usually caused by discrimination against certain groups. Their lack of identification— a citizenship certificate—can exclude them from access to important government services, including health care, education or employment. Returnees »» Returnees are former refugees who return to their own countries or regions of origin after time in exile. Returnees need continuous support and reintegration assistance to ensure that they can rebuild their lives at home. In 2009, more than five million IDPs and 251,000 refugees were reported to have returned home.