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At the end of 2010 there were more than 10.5 million recognized refugees under United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) responsibility worldwide, and 837,500 asylum seekers whose cases were still pending (UNHCR, 2011). More than three quarters of the world's refugees are living in a country neighboring their own, with about four fifths of them living in African or Asian countries, as are nearly half of the world's asylum seekers. For an asylum seeker to be recognized as a refugee, they have to meet the criteria of the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, which has been signed by the majority of the world's states. This declares that a refugee is a person who: "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country." Thus, the primary decision to be made by immigration authorities in any country where a person asks to be recognized as a refugee is whether this asylum seeker has a "well-founded fear of being persecuted" in the country of their nationality, for reasons of race, religion, and so on. When asylum seekers arrive without nationality papers or other identity documents, another important part of the determination of refugee status involves verifying that the asylum seeker's claimed country of their nationality is valid. Does the person really come from where they claim to, or is this a false claim made in order to be granted refugee status? |
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