Refugees

Pronunciation: "re-fyu-'jE
Function: noun
Etymology: French réfugié, past participle of (se) réfugier to take refuge, from Middle French refugier, from Latin refugium: one that flees; especially : a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution

Source:Merriam-Webster

The Hazara ethnic group, inhabitants of Bamian, were targeted by the Taliban and forced into exile. Today, 60 percent of the half-million people forcibly exiled have returned. This family is part of that number. Feroz Bahar, Bamian.
© Zalmai/UNHCR/APERTURE

Rwandan Hutu refugees flee Rwanda

Origin of major refugee populations
Afghanistan	2,108,000
Iraq	2,051,000
Sudan	686,000
Somalia	464,000
DR Congo	402,000
Burundi	397,000
Viet Nam	374,000
Turkey	227,000
Angola	207,000
Myanmar	203,000

As of September 2007 UNHRC

The General Assembly established the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on 14 December 1950. The UNHCR mandate is to lead and coordinate international action for the world-wide protection of refugees and the resolution of refugee problems.

Vital Statistics:

In total, some 50 million people around the world might be described as victims of forced displacement.
Around 14 million people are refugees in the conventional sense of the word: people who have left their own country to escape from persecution, armed conflict or violence. To this figure can be added a very large number of uprooted people who do not receive any form of international protection or assistance, the majority of whom remain within the borders in their own country.
Nearly two-thirds of the world's refugees are in the Middle East and Africa. Although refugee flows are widespread, a handful of countries are the primary source. Half of all refugees come from three sources: Palestinians, as well as from Afghanistan and Iraq. Completing the list of the ten leading sources of refugees are Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Angola, Croatia, and Eritrea.
UNHCR, the United Nations refugee organization, is mandated by the UN to lead and coordinate international action for the world-wide protection of refugees and the resolution of refugee problems. When first created by the UN General Assembly in 1951, UNHCR was charged primarily with resettling 1.2 million European refugees left homeless in the aftermath of World War II.

The vast majority of the world's uprooted people remain in developing nations.

Major internally displaced populations of concern to UNHCR
Colombia	2,000,000
Iraq	1,200,000
Sudan	841,900
Azerbaijan	578,500
Somalia	400,000
Sri Lanka	324,700
Serbia & Mont.	246,400
Liberia	237,800
Georgia	234,200
Bosnia & Herz.	182,700
Russian Fed.	170,500
Afghanistan	142,500

Most refugees are women and children.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that up to 2.5 million people have fled Iraq, with most settling in neighboring Syria and Jordan. And the International Organization for Migration estimates that 2.4 million others — nearly 9 percent of Iraq’s population — have become "internal refugees," abandoning their homes to huddle miserably in other parts of the country as victims of de facto ethnic cleansing.

More than 80 percent of the internally displaced are women and children, most of whom, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society reports, "suffer from disease, poverty and malnutrition."

Refugee children from Bosnia-Herzegovina accommodated in a mosque in Zagreb, Croatia

UNHRC image

On Our Watch - A documentary about genocide in Darfur

Credit: The United Nations, U.S. State Department, Refugees International