V. ASYLUM-SEEKERS An asylum-seeker is an individual seeking international protection and whose refugee status is yet to be determined. This section will present the main trends in asylum applications lodged in 2015, with an overview of decisions. 32 S ome 2.45 million33 individual applications for asylum or refugee status were submitted to States or UNHCR in 174 countries or territories in 2015. This number represents an increase of about 48 per cent compared to 2014 (1.66 million applications). This is the highest number of applications ever recorded, although the percentage increase between 2014 and 2015 was less than that between 2013 and 2014 (54%). Of the provisional total of 2.45million asylum claims, an estimated 2.04 million were initial applications34 lodged in ‘first instance’ procedures. The remaining 411,000 claims were submitted at second instance, including with courts or other appellate bodies.35 In countries where UNHCR undertakes refugee status determination, UNHCR’s offices registered an increasing number of individual asylum cases, reaching an all-time high with 269,700 in 2015. However, there was a proportional decrease in the number of applications received by UNHCR when compared to all individual asylum applications, from a high of 19 per cent in 2013 to 11 per cent in 2015 Table 2 . This was a result of the large increase in individual asylum applications in countries with functioning national mechanisms for determining asylum status. 32 This section does not include information on mass influxes of refugees, nor on those recognized as refugees on a group or prima facie basis. 33 Because some countries have not yet released all of their national asylum data at the time of writing, this figure is likely to be revised later this year. Adjustments were made to asylum applications originating in Hungary and Serbia and Kosovo: S/RES/1244 (1999), both of which registered many asylum applications in order to facilitate transit. These cases were then closed with no decision made. Including these cases skewed the asylum claims and increased the double counting between countries, as it is assumed that most claimants would then submit an application for asylum in another European country. Therefore, closed cases were removed from the total applications in Hungary and in Serbia and Kosovo (S/RES/1244 (1999)). The number of pending cases was added to the figure to account for the closure of pending cases from 2014. 34 The data for some countries include a significant number of repeat claims, i.e. the applicant has submitted at least one previous application in the same or another country. 35 Statistical information on outcomes of asylum appeals and court proceedings is under-reported in UNHCR’s statistics, particularly in industrialized countries because this type of data is often either not collected by States or not published separately. UNHCR Global Trends 2015 37