A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a person who has lost the protection of their country of origin and who cannot or is unwilling to return there due to well-founded fear of persecution. Such a person may be called an asylum seeker until granted refugee status by the contracting state or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) if they formally make a claim for asylum.
Similar terms in other languages have described an event marking migration of a specific population from a place of origin, such as the biblical account of Israelites fleeing from Assyrian conquest (740 BCE), or the asylum found by the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his emigrant companions with helpers in Yathrib (later Medina) after they fled from persecution in Mecca. In English, the term refugee derives from the root word refuge, from Old French refuge, meaning "hiding place". It refers to "shelter or protection from danger or distress", from Latin fugere, "to flee", and refugium, "a taking [of] refuge, place to flee back to". In Western history, the term was first applied to French Protestant Huguenots looking for a safe place against Catholic persecution after the first Edict of Fontainebleau in 1540. The word appeared in the English language when French Huguenots fled to Britain in large numbers after the 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau (the revocation of the 1598 Edict of Nantes) in France and the 1687 Declaration of Indulgence in England and Scotland. The word meant "one seeking asylum", until around 1916, when it evolved to mean "one fleeing home", applied in this instance to civilians in Flanders heading west to escape fighting in World War I.
The first modern definition of international refugee status came about under the League of Nations in 1921 from the Commission for Refugees. Following World War II, and in response to the large numbers of people fleeing Eastern Europe, the UN 1951 Refugee Convention defined "refugee" (in Article 1.A.
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The course will introduce students to different forms of violence related to the existence of state borders and social boundaries, focusing on particular situations in Switzerland, and the way spatial
Centré sur les formes d'habitat des plus pauvres dans les pays du Sud et les contextes de crises dues à des catastrophes naturelles ou à des conflits, en particulier les architectures d'urgence (bidon
This course examines key areas of contemporary migration politics in a historical perspective, such as refugee protection, border security, and regional integration. It also trains students in methods
Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and supporters around the world. The stated mission of the organization is to campaign for "a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to a third country. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with over 18,879 staff working in 138 countries. UNHCR was created in 1950 to address the refugee crisis that resulted from World War II.
Nansen passports, originally and officially stateless persons passports, were internationally recognized refugee travel documents from 1922 to 1938, first issued by the League of Nations's Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees to stateless refugees. They quickly became known as "Nansen passports" for their promoter, the Norwegian statesman and polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen. The end of World War I saw significant turmoil, leading to a refugee crisis.
Regenerative Architecture is a conscious practice that seeks to create projects that benefit all impacted spheres, whether environmental, social or technical. The main aim is to have a qualitative and positive impact on the environment while bringing all u ...
The essay investigates the intellectual production developed by Italian refugees hosted in the military internment camp opened in Lausanne in January 1944 and active until the spring of 1945, when the refuges returned to Italy. In the complex and controver ...
The settlement history of Huế is one of constant demographic shifts, political turmoil, and natural vulnerability. A borderland and battleground during Vietnam’s invasion of Champa Kingdom, the North-South Civil War between two Vietnamese clans Trịnh - Ngu ...