© UNHCR / Qaisar Khan Afridi
Saifur, 11, and Shamsur, 13, are brothers, students and
cricketers who were born and grew up in Surkhab
refugee village in Balochistan, Pakistan. Saifur wants
to become an engineer, while Shamsur hopes to
become a cardiologist. Their family is from the Khost
province in Afghanistan. Both brothers have mixed
feelings about their move to Afghanistan; they will
miss Pakistan, but they are also excited to see their
own country for the first time.
data on naturalized refugees are usually uneven and
incomplete. In instances where refugees acquired citizenship through naturalization, statistical data are often limited, as countries may not distinguish between
the naturalization of refugees and that of non-refugees. Thus, many gaps and challenges exist in measuring local integration by the number of naturalized
refugees, and the reported number of naturalized
refugees in a given period is not a true reflection of
local integration. During 2015, 28 countries reported
at least one naturalized refugee, two countries more
than the previous year Figure 11 .
The total number of naturalized refugees stood at
32,000 during 2015, compared to 32,100 reported in
2014. As in the previous year, Canada reported the
largest number of naturalized refugees in 2015, with
25,900. This represents approximately 81 per cent
of all naturalized refugees reported during the year.
Other countries that reported large numbers of naturalized refugees included France (2,500), Belgium
(1,700), and Austria (1,000). ●
UNHCR Global Trends 2015 27