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.
An asylum seeker is a person who leaves their country of residence, enters another country, and makes in that other country a formal application for the right of asylum according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 14. A person keeps the status of asylum seeker until the right of asylum application has concluded.
The Georgetown University Law Center is the law school of Georgetown University, a private research university in Washington, D.C., United States. It was established in 1870 and is the largest law school in the United States by enrollment, with over 2,000 students. It frequently receives the most full-time applications of any law school in the United States.
Sadako Ogata, néeNakamura, was a Japanese academic, diplomat, author, administrator, and professor emerita at the Roman Catholic Sophia University. She was widely known as the head of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 1991 to 2000, as well as in her capacities as Chair of the UNICEF Executive Board from 1978 to 1979 and as President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) from 2003 to 2012. She also served as Advisor of the Executive Committee of the Japan Model United Nations (JMUN).
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.
Afghan refugees are citizens of Afghanistan who were forced to flee from their country as a result the continuous wars that the country has suffered since the Afghan-Soviet war, the Afghan civil war, the Afghanistan war (2001–2021) or either political or religious persecution. The 1978 Saur Revolution, followed by the 1979 Soviet invasion, marked the first major wave of internal displacement and international migration to neighboring Iran and Pakistan; smaller numbers also went to India or to countries of the former Soviet Union. Between 1979 and 1992, more than 20% of Afghanistan's population fled the country as refugees. Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, many returned to Afghanistan, however many Afghans were again forced to flee during the civil war in the 90s. Over 6 million Afghan refugees were residing in Iran and Pakistan by 2000. Most refugees returned to Afghanistan following the 2001 United States invasion and overthrow of the Taliban regime. Between 2002 and 2012, 5.7 million refugees returned to Afghanistan, increasing the country's population by 25%.
B. S. Chimni is a legal scholar and academic who is presently distinguished professor of international law member at Jindal Global Law School. His areas of expertise include international law, international trade law and international refugee law. He has been chairperson of the Centre for International Legal Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He had a 2+1⁄2-year stint as vice chancellor of the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences. He has been a visiting professor at the International Center for Comparative Law and Politics, Tokyo University, a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, visiting fellow at Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, and a visiting scholar at the Refugee Studies Center, York University, Canada.
The United States recognizes the right of asylum for individuals seeking protections from persecution, as specified by international and federal law. People who seek protection while outside the U.S. are termed refugees, while people who seek protection from inside the U.S. are termed asylum seekers. Those who are granted asylum are termed asylees.
Refugees of Iraq are Iraqi nationals who have fled Iraq due to war or persecution. In 1980- 2017, large number of refugees fled Iraq, peaking with the Iraq War and continuing until the end of the War in Iraq (2013–2017). Precipitated by a series of conflicts including the Kurdish rebellions during the Iran–Iraq War, Iraq's Invasion of Kuwait (1990) and the Gulf War (1991), the subsequent sanctions against Iraq (1991–2003), culminating in the Iraq War and the subsequent War in Iraq (2013–2017), millions were forced by insecurity to flee their homes in Iraq. Iraqi refugees established themselves in urban areas in other countries rather than refugee camps.
Azerbaijan has a large number of internally displaced people and refugees, mostly as a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The First Nagorno-Karabakh war led to the displacement of approximately 700,000 Azerbaijanis. This figure includes around 500,000 people from Nagorno-Karabakh and the previously occupied surrounding regions, in addition to 186,000 from Armenia.
Institute for the Study of International Migration is a private research institute located in Washington, DC. Founded in 1998 as part of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, it is associated with the Georgetown University Law Center. The Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) is an innovative multidisciplinary center that studies the social, economic, environmental, and political dimensions of international migration.
Luise Druke, DPhil, MPA is a German scholar and practitioner in the fields of International Relations, United Nations, and Refugee protection. Besides her academic work, Dr. Druke has headed offices and missions of the UNHCR in Europe, South East Asia and Central Asia, Latin America, and Africa for nearly 30 years.
Cornelia Thayer Livingston Pillard, known professionally as Nina Pillard, is an American lawyer and jurist serving since 2013 as a U.S. circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Before becoming a judge, Pillard was a law professor at Georgetown University.
A refugee crisis can refer to difficulties and dangerous situations in the reception of large groups of forcibly displaced persons. These could be either internally displaced, refugees, asylum seekers or any other huge groups of migrants.
Doris Marie Meissner is a former Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the agency previously responsible for immigration enforcement in the United States. She headed the INS from October 18, 1993 to November 18, 2000, under United States President Bill Clinton and United States Attorney General Janet Reno. She is currently Senior Fellow and Director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute and has previously worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Alan C. Nelson (1933-1997) was a Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) under the administration of then United States President Ronald Reagan, and co-author of the original proposal behind California Proposition 187.
Maryellen Fullerton is an American lawyer and academic. She is a professor of law and former interim dean at Brooklyn Law School. She was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Trento for 2012-13.
As Indonesia did not sign the convention on the status of refugees and lacks any domestic legislations providing refugees rights, refugees in Indonesia do not have the right to employment, permanent residency or citizenship.
Maher Bitar is an American government official who worked in the Obama and Biden Administrations.
Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia is an American lawyer serving as the officer for civil rights and civil liberties of the United States Department of Homeland Security since 2023. She is an associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion, the Samuel Weiss Faculty Scholar, and a clinical professor of law at Penn State Law.
