Imagine being forced to flee your country in order to escape to safety. If you were lucky you had time to pack a bag. If not, you simply dropped everything and ran.
Refugees are people fleeing conflict or persecution. They are defined and protected in international law, and must not be expelled or returned to situations where their life and freedom are at risk. At UNHCR, we have been assisting them for over half a century.
Life as a refugee can be difficult to imagine. But, for 43.4 million people around the world, it is a terrifying reality.
Under international law, a refugee is a person who has been forced to flee their country due to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group.
Today, there are 43.4 million refugees globally. An estimated 40 per cent of the world’s refugees are children. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is mandated to protect 31.6 million refugees and 5.8 million other people in need of international protection. A further 6 million Palestine refugees are supported by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which was set up in 1949 to care for displaced Palestinians.
At the end of August 2024, there were approximately 86,000 refugees in Thailand comprising some 81,000 Myanmar refugees residing in nine temporary shelters on the Thai-Myanmar border and approximately 5,500 “urban” refugees of some 40 nationalities who live in Bangkok and the surrounding urban areas.
The protection of refugees has many aspects. These include safety from being returned to danger, access to fair and efficient asylum procedures, and measures to ensure that their basic human rights are respected while they secure a longer-term solution. UNHCR works around the clock to accomplish all of this, but we can’t do it alone.
Your support helps us to continue providing life-saving protection to millions.