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.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is a United Nations related organization working in the field of migration. The organization implements operational assistance programmes for migrants, including internally displaced persons, refugees, and migrant workers.
Immigration to Türkiye is the process by which people migrate to Turkey to reside in the country. Many, but not all, become Turkish citizens. After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and following Turkish War of Independence, an exodus by the large portion of Turkish (Turkic) and Muslim peoples from the Balkans, Caucasus, Crimea, and Greece took refuge in present-day Türkiye and moulded the country's fundamental features. Trends of immigration towards Türkiye continue to this day, although the motives are more varied and are usually in line with the patterns of global immigration movements. Turkey's migrant crisis is a following period since the 2010s, characterized by high numbers of people arriving and settling in Türkiye.
Throughout the 20th century, Iraq witnessed multiple periods of instability and conflict that prompted the creation and flight of many refugees. Earlier examples include the exodus of Iraqi Jews and the flight of Iraqi Kurds. The Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980 and the ensuing Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) triggered a deterioration of ties among the country's various ethnic and religious communities, and also exacerbated in violent events like the Ba'athist Arabization campaigns in northern Iraq (1968–2003), which led to the killing and displacement of thousands of minorities. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (1990) and the ensuing Gulf War (1990–1991), which ended with Iraq's defeat and the application of United Nations sanctions (1991–2003), also resulted in the creation of many Iraqi refugees. It was not until the beginning of the ongoing Iraqi conflict, however, that sustained waves of Iraqi refugees would be created, numbering in the millions: the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the ensuing Iraq War (2003–2011) killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, both internally and externally, and the later War in Iraq (2003–2017) forced even more people to flee from the country. Many Iraqi refugees established themselves in urban areas of other countries rather than in refugee camps.
Immigration to Greece percentage of foreign populations in Greece is 7.1% in proportion to the total population of the country. Moreover, between 9 and 11% of the registered Greek labor force of 4.4 million are foreigners. Migrants additionally make up 25% of wage and salary earners.
Since the late 1970s until the present, Iraq has witnessed numerous waves of refugees and emigrants due to significant events in its modern history. These events have led to the displacement of millions of Iraqis. These include over three decades of repression, periodic violent attacks, and massacres targeting the Kurdish population in the north and the Shi'a in the south, all carried out by Saddam Hussein's regime. Other factors include the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), the Gulf War of 1991, the prolonged economic sanctions until the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
Turkish Afghans are citizens of Turkey and non-citizen residents born in or with ancestors from Afghanistan. This group is part of the larger Afghan diaspora around the world. According to latest reports, there are around 129,323 Afghan refugees and asylum seekers in Turkey. The government of Turkey claims that the total Afghan population in its country is around 300,000. At the same time others have mentioned a total of 420,000. This number likely includes citizens, legal residents, visitors, and the aforementioned refugees and asylum seekers. The reason for the different numbers is that there is no proper way to count undocumented foreign nationals in a country.
Iraqis in Turkey includes Turkish citizens of Iraqi origin, Iraqi-born citizens and Iraqi expat workers.
Refugees of the Syrian civil war are citizens and permanent residents of Syria who have fled the country in the course of the Syrian civil war. The pre-war population of the Syrian Arab Republic was estimated at 22 million (2017), including permanent residents. Of that number, the United Nations (UN) identified 13.5 million (2016) as displaced persons in need of humanitarian assistance. Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011 more than six million (2016) were internally displaced, and around five million (2016) crossed into other countries, seeking asylum or placement in Syrian refugee camps. It is believed to be one of the world's largest refugee crises.
Syrian refugee camp and shelters are temporary settlements built to receive internally displaced people and refugees of the Syrian Civil War. Of the estimated 7 million persons displaced within Syria, only a small minority live in camps or collective shelters. Similarly, of the 8 million refugees, only about 10 percent live in refugee camps, with the vast majority living in both urban and rural areas of neighboring countries. Beside Syrians, they include Iraqis, Palestinians, Kurds, Yazidis, individuals from Somalia, and a minority of those who fled the Yemeni and Sudanese civil wars.
The 2015 European migrant crisis was a period of significantly increased movement of refugees and migrants into Europe, namely from the Middle East. An estimated 1.3 million people came to the continent to request asylum, the most in a single year since World War II. They were mostly Syrians, but also included a significant number of people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Eritrea, and the Balkans. The increase in asylum seekers has been attributed to factors such as the escalation of various wars in the Middle East and ISIL's territorial and military dominance in the region due to the Arab Winter, as well as Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt ceasing to accept Syrian asylum seekers.
Refugees in Romania have arrived in multiple waves throughout Romania's history. Historical waves of refugees include the Armenians who fled the Ottoman Empire due to the Armenian genocide in 1915, Greeks who fled persecution after the Greek Civil War and during the Greek military junta of 1967–74, Koreans who fled the Korean War and Chileans fleeing the Military dictatorship of Chile (1973–90).
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.
This is a timeline of the European migrant crisis of 2015 and 2016.
Refugees in Poland were, until 2022, a relatively small group. Since 1989, the number of people applying for refugee status in Poland has risen from about 1,000 to 10,000 each year; about 1–2% of the applications were approved. The majority of applications were citizens of the former Soviet Union.
The Greece–Turkey border is around 200 kilometres (120 mi) long, and separates Western Thrace in Greece from East Thrace in Turkey.
Refugees of the Syrian civil war in Turkey are the Syrian refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war. The Republic of Turkey hosts over 3.7 million registered refugees.
"Refugees as weapons" is a term used to describe a hostile government organizing, or threatening to organize, a sudden influx of refugees into another country or political entity with the intent of causing political disturbances in that entity. The responsible country usually seeks to extract concessions from the targeted country and achieve some political, military, and/or economic objective.
The migration and asylum policy of the European Union is within the area of freedom, security and justice, established to develop and harmonise principles and measures used by member countries of the European Union to regulate migration processes and to manage issues concerning asylum and refugee status in the European Union.
The European Union response to the 2015 migrant crisis focused on how the countries organized the efforts in response to the 2015 European migrant crisis at the EU level. The European Commission in May 2015 proposed distributing the incoming refugees based on GDP and population. This proposal was divisive with Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic refusing any refugees. Some nation states then called on the EU to reduce funding for member countries who did not want to share burdens and didn't share "values...need to start asking themselves questions about their place in the European Union". This attempt to coalition build failed, the European Commission proceeded to strengthen existing systems such as the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), reforming the Dublin Regulation and centralizing the asylum process. There was also challenges to the European borders which came from the Mediterranean Sea; as a response the European Border and Coast Guard Agency engaged in a new operation called Operation Triton.
