North America - Refugee population by country or territory of asylum

Refugee population by country or territory of asylum

The value for Refugee population by country or territory of asylum in North America was 450,145 as of 2020. As the graph below shows, over the past 30 years this indicator reached a maximum value of 995,281 in 2006 and a minimum value of 370,285 in 2016.

Definition: Refugees are people who are recognized as refugees under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees or its 1967 Protocol, the 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, people recognized as refugees in accordance with the UNHCR statute, people granted refugee-like humanitarian status, and people provided temporary protection. Asylum seekers--people who have applied for asylum or refugee status and who have not yet received a decision or who are registered as asylum seekers--are excluded. Palestinian refugees are people (and their descendants) whose residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948 and who lost their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. Country of asylum is the country where an asylum claim was filed and granted.

Source: Data before 2018 are from United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Statistics Database, Statistical Yearbook and data files, complemented by statistics on Palestinian refugees under the mandate of the UNRWA as published on its website. Data

See also:

Year Value
1990 619,648
1991 684,801
1992 763,661
1993 806,297
1994 817,601
1995 775,389
1996 745,432
1997 688,989
1998 653,306
1999 644,437
2000 635,200
2001 645,078
2002 615,108
2003 585,624
2004 562,190
2005 526,494
2006 995,281
2007 456,897
2008 453,130
2009 444,822
2010 430,054
2011 429,631
2012 425,757
2013 424,000
2014 416,378
2015 409,088
2016 370,285
2017 391,903
2018 427,343
2019 443,472
2020 450,145

Classification

Topic: Labor & Social Protection Indicators

Sub-Topic: Migration