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This is the first post in an on-going series on Refugee Law, following what I’m learning in Refugee Law with Dr Michelle Foster. To read the full series go here.

To start my blog series on Refugee Law here are some statistics to set the scene for us.

In 2006 the total number of refugees was 8.4 million
Estimated number of internally displaced people in 2005: 23.7 million

The Top 10 origin countries for refugees were (the top 3 places they went are in brackets):

• Afghanistan: 1.9 million (Pakistan, Iran, Germany)
• Sudan: 693,300 (Chad, Uganda, Kenya)
• Burundi: 438,700 (Tanzania, Congo, Rwanda)
• Democratic Republic of Congo: 430,600 (Tanzania, Zambia, Congo)
• Somalia: 394,800 (Kenya, Yemen, UK)
• Vietnam: 358,200 (China, Germany, USA)
• Palestinians: 349,700 (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq)
• Iraq: 262,100 (Iran, Germany, Netherlands)
• Azerbaijan: 233,700 (Armenia, Germany, USA)
• Liberia: 231,100 (Sierra Leone, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire)

As the stats above show, refugee flows are intensely regional and most refugees stay in the Majority World. This flies in the face of the some of the political arguments of the “floods” of refugees waiting to enter Australia. Interestingly, even the Congo produced over 430,000 refugees in 2006 people from Burundi still sought asylum there.

In 2006, Australia received 3,510 applications for asylum, down from 5,860 in 2002.
In comparison, Canada received 22,910 requests, down from 39,500 in 2002

Asylum applications per 1000 inhabitants

• Australia: 0.2
• Sweden: 1.9
• France: 0.8
• Canada: 0.6
• United Kingdom: 0.5
• United States of America: 0.2

Asia hosted around two-fifths of all the people of concern to UNHCR, 8.6 million or 41%, followed by Africa 5.2 million [25%], Europe 3.7 million [18%], Latin America 2.5 million [12%], North America 716,800 [3%] and Oceania 82,500 [0.4%].

During 2005, a total of 668,400 people applied for asylum worldwide, more than half of them in Europe. The largest number of claims were submitted by nationals of Myanmar, Somalia and Serbia and Montenegro.

The top five refugee-hosting countries are Pakistan: 1,085,000 (UNHCR estimate); Iran: 716,000; Germany: 700,000; Tanzania: 549,000; and United States: 380,000 (UNHCR estimate).

The majority of these stats came from the very excellent UNCHR Statistics Database, which has an easy to use online interface if you want to do your own number crunching. Don’t forget to donate to them while you’re there.

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