Refugee Defined
According to the 1951 Refugee Convention, a refugee is a person who has “a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside of the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country…” (United Nations, 1951, p. 16). The key piece of this definition is that refugees do not voluntarily choose to move. The term refugee is often used interchangeably with several other terms including migrant and asylum-seeker. A migrant makes the choice to immigrate to another country in search of a better quality of life. Reasons for migration often include increased opportunities for careers, education, and living arrangements (The UN Refugee Agency, 2007). An asylum-seeker is someone who claims to need international protection as a refugee, but whose status has not yet been confirmed by the country of asylum. If the asylum-seeker is not granted refugee status, he/she may be sent back to his/her home country (The UN Refugee Agency, 2009).
There are a few other groups of people considered to have refugee-like status. Internally displaced people (IDP) are forced to move to another part of the country to avoid ill effects of war, government tyranny, and human rights violations but they never cross international borders. Stateless people are not considered to be a national of any state due to government discrimination regarding minority groups, conflicts between state laws, and failure to include all residents when a state secedes. People who were once refugees but have voluntarily returned home in safety are called returnees (The UN Refugee Agency, 2007).
