Table 3 New asylum claims registered in UNHCR offices with more than 10,000 claims* | 2012-2015 Turkey * Malaysia Egypt ** Jordan Lebanon 2012 2013 2014 2015 26,500 19,400 6,700 2,500 1,800 44,800 53,600 10,800 6,700 2,800 87,800 25,700 10,000 29,100 14,500 133,300 22,100 21,100 19,400 17,800 * Excluding appeal/review claims ** Includes asylum-seekers registered with UNHCR as well as asylumseekers who have been pre-registered but who are pending official registration with UNHCR. in the European Union, with their cases closed soon afterward. These closed cases have been removed from the figures for Hungary, in order to reflect applications from people seeking asylum there more accurately and to reduce some double counting of new applicants.41 Even with the adjustment, Hungary still received about 74,200 new applications for asylum in 2015. Roughly half of these came from individuals from the Syrian Arab Republic (36,600), followed by Afghanistan (15,300), Pakistan (7,700), and Iraq (4,400). Together these nationalities accounted for about 86 per cent of all asylum claims in Hungary in 2015. France was the ninth-largest recipient with 74,200 individual claims for asylum during 2015, an increase from the 59,000 registered in 2014. Sudan was the top country of origin for asylum-seekers in France with 5,300 applications, followed by Serbia and Kosovo: S/RES/1244 (1999) (5,300) and the Syrian Arab Republic (5,100) – another contrast with 2014, when the top countries of origin were the Democratic Republic of the Congo followed by the Russian Federation. The numbers of asylum-seekers from Iraq and Afghanistan in France increased significantly between 2014 and 2015: from 900 to 3,100 and from 600 to 2,500, respectively. Finally, South Africa was the destination country that received the greatest number of claims for asylum from 2007 to 2010, especially for those from Zimbabwe. Yet the number of asylum-seekers in the country has dropped considerably since a high of 222,300 in 2009; it stood at 62,200 in 2015, making South Africa the 10th-largest recipient of asylum-seekers. Over time, both the absolute number and the proportion of Zimbabweans seeking asylum has declined, although they are still the single largest nationality group with 17,800 claims, representing 29 per cent of the total. This stands in contrast to 2009 when 149,500 Zimbabwean asylum claims were received, or in 2010 when such claims 40 UNHCR Global Trends 2015 represented over 81 per cent of South Africa’s total. As would be expected, asylum claims in South Africa are dominated by individuals originating in sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for 84 per cent of the total, with Ethiopia (9,300), Nigeria (6,600), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (6,400) being the top countries of origin after Zimbabwe. In 2015, UNHCR’s offices registered 257,700 new individual applications for refugee status and 12,000 on appeal or for review. As in recent years, the office in Turkey received the highest number of new requests, 133,300, a figure that has been increasing, followed by Malaysia (22,100), Egypt (21,100), Jordan (19,400), and Lebanon (17,800) Table 3 . Turkey now accounts for over half (52%) of all new asylum applications received by UNHCR offices, up from 37 per cent in 2014. Together, the top five countries (listed in Table 3) account for 83 per cent of all new individual asylum applications registered by UNHCR offices. By Nationality As in the previous two years, Syrians lodged the largest number of asylum claims worldwide during 2015 Figure 17 – 373,700 new claims, or 18 per cent of the global total. Further, this proportion increased since 2014, when Syrians accounted for 12 per cent of all new claims for asylum. Excluding the Middle East region, where this group enjoys temporary protection, individual claims for asylum were received from Syrians in 127 countries; however, the largest number of these claims were in Europe, notably Germany (158,700) and Sweden (52,035), as in 2014. Other countries with significant numbers of Syrian asylum-seekers included Hungary (36,600), Austria (24,400), the Netherlands (18,700), Norway (10,500), and Belgium (10,300). In general, recognition rates for Syrian asylum-seekers were above 90 per cent in most countries. Afghans were the second-largest group of asylumseekers, with 239,600 new applications registered during 2015. This excludes the more than 2.6 million refugees recognized in the Islamic Republic of Iran and Pakistan on a prima facie basis over the years and currently residing in these countries. Turkey 41 Asylum claims in Hungary and Serbia and Kosovo: S/RES/1244 (1999) were adjusted to account for the large number of claims that were administratively closed and concerns of double counting from asylum-seekers who transited through Hungary and Serbia and Kosovo: S/RES/1244/ (1999), to submit asylum claims in other countries in Europe. To calculate the adjusted asylum claims in Hungary and Serbia and Kosovo (S/RES/1244 (1999)), the number of pending cases was added to the number of cases where a substantive decision was made in order to account for closed cases from applications in 2015 (as some of the cases closed were pending cases from earlier years and occasionally exceeded the number of new applications).