UNHCR, APRIL 2023 REFUGEES FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION or regulation in accordance with the legal requirements in each country. Civil registration is carried out primarily for the purpose of establishing the documents provided for by law.” 104 Durable solutions UNHCR considers that there are three “durable solutions”, by which the situation of persons of concern to UNHCR can be satisfactorily and permanently resolved through ensuring national protection for their civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. In the refugee context a durable solution generally involves voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement. For stateless persons durable solutions are linked to the grant or recognition of nationality. 105 Local integration “Broadly speaking, integration can be understood as the gradual inclusion of refugees, asylum seekers, and other refugee related groups in their host country. This entails the progressive enjoyment of rights, increasing access to national services and social and cultural networks, and an absence of discrimination. Ideally, this process results in full integration, which occurs when refugees and other persons of concern enjoy the same rights and access to national services and systems as nationals and non -refugee permanent residents. They are not discriminated against on the basis of their legal status or country of origin, and they enjoy peaceful co-existence with the local population and participate in the social and cultural life of the wider host community. Full local integration is enjoyed when persons of concern enjoy inclusion across legal, economic, social, cultural, and political spheres.” 106 Long-term refugee Long-term refugee is not a term that has an official definition, but is employed in this report to refer to a person who has been living outside his or her country of origin as a refugee for more than 20 years, including any children born in exile who hold derivative refugee status. The term is used to provide greater clarity on the populations of concern for this study, which focuses on those who have held refugee status for much longer than the five-year period employed by UNHCR for statistical purposes in reporting on “protracted refugee situations” (see entry below). Protracted refugee situations There is no definition of protracted refugee situations in international law. UNHCR’s Executive Committee (ExCom) adopted a conclusion in 2009 that defined a protracted refugee situation as a situation where refugees have been in exile “for five or more years after their initial displacement, without immediate prospects for implementation of durable solutions”. 107 For statistical purposes, UNHCR reports on 104 See definition at: https://unstats.un.org/legal-identity-agenda/, based on Principles and Recommendations for a Vital Statistics System, Revision 3, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2014, para 279. https://www.un.org/development/desa/cdpmo/tools/2020/principles-and-recommendations-vital-statisticssystem-revision-3. 105 Adapted from: https://www.unhcr.org/glossary/. 106 Source: International Recommendations on Refugee Statistics (IRRS), Expert Group on Refugee and Internally Displaced Persons Statistics, United Nations and European Union, March 2018 https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic-social/Standards-andMethods/files/Principles_and_Recommendations/International-Migration/2018_1746_EN_08-E.pdf 107 ‘Conclusion on Protracted Refugee Situations, No. 109 (LXI) – 2009’, UNHCR Executive Committee, 61st session, Extraordinary Meeting, 8 December 2009 available with other resources on protracted refugee situations collected at https://www.unhcr.org/research/eval/4a1d43986/protracted-refugee-situations.html. See also discussion in James Milner, ‘Protracted Refugee Situations’, in The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, 43