REFUGEES FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION UNHCR, APRIL 2023 protracted refugee situations where 25,000 or more refugees originating from the same country have sought refuge in another country for at least five consecutive years.108 The 25,000 figure was first employed in a report to the UNHCR ExCom in 2004; the same report proposed that in general, “a protracted refugee situation is one in which refugees find themselves in a long-lasting and intractable state of limbo”.109 To avoid confusion, “protracted refugee situation” will be used in this report in line with the defin ition in the 2009 ExCom conclusion, without a numerical limit for the number of people affected: that is, a situation in which refugees are trapped, for five or more years after their initial displacement, without immediate prospects for implementation of durable solutions. This study focuses, however, on the situation of people who have held refugee status for a much longer period than five years: see entry on “long-term refugee”. Refugee The term “refugee” is defined in article 1 of the 1951 Convention as a person “who, owing to a wellfounded 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 or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”. The definition of refugee in article 1 of the OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa replicates the refugee definition found in the 1951 Convention, but also includes a person compelled to leave his or her country because of “external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or the whole of his [or her] country of origin or nationality”. The definition of a refugee provided in both the UN Refugee Convention and the OAU Convention covers persons who, “not having a nationality”, are outside the country of former habitual residence. That is, the term “refugee” includes stateless refugees. In some cases, lack of recognition of nationality may also be among the reasons for the person’s flight or expulsion and for the difficulty of return. Although a refugee may (and in principle should) be additionally recorded as stateless if that is the case, this is of ten not done, in part because states lack dedicated statelessness determination procedures. The number of stateless persons included among refugee populations is therefore often hidden. In principle, the term “refugee” covers those who fulfil the relevant definition, whether or not they are formally recognised and registered as such by the host country: the refugee status determination procedure is declaratory, not constitutive. In national laws, a person who is not yet recognised as a refugee but has applied for refugee status is often referred to as an asylum seeker (see definition above). Stateless person The 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons provides the international definition of “stateless person”: “a person who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law” (Article 1(1)). UNHCR notes that determining whether a person is stateless is a “mixed question of fact and law”,110 and thus a person may be stateless even if apparently entitled to citizenship, because ed. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et al. (Oxford ; New https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199652433.013.0038. York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 108 UNHCR, ‘Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018’ (Geneva: United Nations, 2019), chap. 2: Refugees; Focus on: protracted refugee situations, https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2018/. 109 ‘Protracted Refugee Situations’, EC/54/SC/CRP.14, UNHCR Executive Committee (ExCom), 10 June 2004. See also UNHCR Master Glossary https://www.unhcr.org/glossary/#p. 110 UNHCR, ‘Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons under the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons’ (Geneva: United Nations, 2014), para. 23, https://www.refworld.org/docid/53b676aa4.html. 44