UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency

International law defines refugees as people

• who are outside their country of origin and
• whose life and or human rights are seriously at risk because of
• who they are (e.g. their race, nationality, social group), or what they believe (e.g. their religious beliefs or political opinion); and
• their governments will not or cannot protect them.

Refugees are entitled to be protected against forcible return to their countries of origin. This is known as the principle of non refoulement.

The terms asylum seeker and refugee are often confused. Asylum seekers are people seeking recognition as refugees, who are waiting for the government to decide on their case. These people are entitled to stay in the State while their application to be considered as a refugee is being considered. They also have a right to a fair hearing of that application and to an appeal.

There is no such thing as a bogus asylum seeker or an illegal asylum seeker. Everybody has a right to seek asylum in another country. People who don't qualify for protection as refugees will not receive refugee status and may be deported. But just because someone doesn't receive refugee status doesn't mean they were a bogus asylum seeker. That would be the same as calling an unsuccessful plaintiff in a case a bogus plaintiff.

Subsidiary protection can be given to people who do not meet the legal definition of a refugee but are still in need of international protection because they would risk facing the following threats if returned to their country: (1) the death penalty or execution; (2) torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; or (3) threats from an international or internal armed conflict. This status was created across the EU by a Directive.

People who flee civil wars and other conflicts may be refugees. If they don't cross an international border, they are referred to as 'internally displaced people' or IDPs.

Trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means such as deception, coercion or force, for the purpose of exploitation. With regard to the trafficking of children, the definition is the same as that for adults with an important exception. Once a child is recruited, transported, transferred, harboured or received by a person for the purposes of exploitation, it is deemed to be trafficking. A child does not have to be deceived or coerced in the same way that an adult does.

Some victims of trafficking may also be in need of international protection arising from circumstances related to the trafficking or for other reasons outside of this.

Migrants and refugees increasingly make use of the same routes and means of transport, including undertaking dangerous sea crossings and using people smugglers. They are, however, fundamentally different and, thus, are treated differently under international law. Migrants, especially economic migrants, choose to move in order to improve their lives. Refugees have to move if they are to save their lives or preserve their freedom.

Currently more than 37 million people are displaced by violence around the world. Many people think that the majority of refugees and asylum seekers come to Europe but this is not in fact the case. The reality is that while the Refugee Convention was designed initially to deal with the displacement of people within Europe, in the aftermath of World War II, Europe for a long time has not been home to most of the world's displaced. In fact the vast majority - about 80 percent - are hosted and cared for in developing countries, not industrialized ones.

For example, when violence and conflict broke out in Libya in early 2011 the majority of the almost 1 million people who fled the violence were offered safety in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia, before they were able to be evacuated home or were offered refuge if returning home was not possible. It’s estimated that less than 2 percent of those leaving Libya came to Europe.

• Rita Ora - Rita's parents fled from Kosovo during the conflict there when Rita was still a baby.
• Regina Spektor – singer, songwriter and pianist. Originally fled Soviet Russia at the age of nine and now based in New York
• Shingai Shoniwa – lead singer of the Noisettes. British-born daughter of Zimbabwean refugees
• MIA - English-born singer. Part of a Tamil Sri Lankan refugee family
• Mika - famous singer who fled from Beirut Lebanon
• Bob Marley - Fled Jamaica to Miami after being shot during political violence
• Olivia Newton-John - singer and actress - granddaughter of refugee Max Born
• Gene Simmons - Member of Kiss. His mother was a Holocaust survivor
• Oscar Straus - Austrian-Jewish composer and refugee
• Maria von Trapp - autobiography, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, inspired The Sound of Music
• K'Naan - Somali "The Dusty Foot Philosopher" Hip Hop Artist now living in Toronto, Canada

• Jackie Chan - Fled to the United States from Hong Kong after being threatened with death by the Triads
• Rachel Weisz - actress. Both her parents are Jewish refugees
• Billy Wilder - film director and writer, and a Jewish refugee
• Jerry Springer - Talk show host. His parents were German refugees
• Marlene Dietrich - actress and refugee from Nazi Germany
• Ben Elton - comedian and grandson of a Czechoslovakian refugee

• David & Ed Miliband – British MPs and sons of a Belgian Jewish refugee
• Madeleine Albright - First female U.S. Secretary of State whose family fled Czechoslovakia in 1938
• Henry Kissinger - U.S. State secretary who fled from Germany to USA in 1938
• Vladimir Lenin - Soviet leader and a refugee who fled to Switzerland
• Karl Marx - The philosopher and creator of Marxism was a German refugee
• Sitting Bull - Sioux tribal chief. He left America for Canada
• Leon Trotsky - Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist

• Tom Stoppard - a British playwright who left Czechoslovakia as a child refugee. He co-wrote Shakespeare in Love and has won several Tony Awards.
• Isabel Allende - Chilean-American Author of The House of Spirits. She fled Chile after receiving death threats.
• Victor Hugo - Author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Due to his political beliefs, he was forced to flee France several times
• Vladimir Nabokov - Russian novelist and short story author. Escaped to Europe from the Russian Civil War and then to the United States from the advance of Nazi Germany
• Lucien Freud - The well-known British painter, he was born in Berlin and fled to the UK with his family to escape Nazism
• Marc Chagall - a Russian-born Jewish refugee and early modernist painter
• Peter Carl Fabergé - Russian jeweller who fled to Switzerland. He is famous for creating the Fabergé egg.
• Camille Pissarro - A French-Jewish refugee. He is considered the father of Impressionist painting
• Sir Alec Issigonis - Designer of the best selling British car in history, the Mini

• Albert Einstein - German-born theoretical physicist. He did not return to Germany once Hitler came to power.
• Mario Stanic - Former footballer with Chelsea. He also played for Sarajevo F.C. who were targeted during the Bosnian War
• Christopher Wreh - Former Arsenal footballer and Liberian refugee
• Alek Wek - Supermodel who fled Sudan with her family, known for her political activism
• Lord Maurice Saatchi and Charles Saatchi - Founders of the famous Saatchi and Saatchi advertising agency, their father was an Iraqi Jewish refugee.
• Sigmund Freud - Father of psychoanalysis, an Austrin Jew who fled from Nazism
• Claude Lévi-Strauss - French-Jewish philosopher and anthropologist who was also a French refugee
• Jesus Christ - Family fled from Israel because of King Herod