Chapter 5 Per cent Figure 16 | Global Total Protection Rates | 2001-2017 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 ‘01 ‘03 ‘05 ‘07 Based on the available data, 732,500 asylumseekers were granted some form of protection in 2017, with 484,000 recognized as refugees and 248,500 granted a complementary form of protection. This was a decrease from 2016 when 899,600 positive decisions were rendered but still higher than previous years, with 681,300 positive decisions in 2015 and 615,000 in 2014. About 754,100 claims were rejected on substantive grounds, a number that included negative decisions at the first instance and on appeal. Asylum-seekers rejected at both first and appeal instances may be reported twice, depending on the methods used by governments for reporting decisions on individual asylum applications. At the global level (UNHCR and State asylum procedures combined), the TPR was 49 per cent – i.e. the percentage of substantive decisions that resulted in any form of international protection. This rate is substantially lower than in 2016 when it stood at 60 per cent but still higher than in years prior to 2014 [Figure 16]. At this time, global rates are indicative, as some States have not yet reported the relevant data. Among countries of asylum with more than 1,000 substantive decisions, protection rates vary greatly, and some countries had very low figures: Gabon, Israel, Japan, Pakistan, and Republic of Korea all had a TPR of below 10 per cent. Japan stands out as having a particularly low TPR with unhcr > Global trends 2017 ‘09 ‘11 ‘13 ‘15 ‘17 under 100 positive decisions out of 12,900 decisions made, resulting in a TPR of under 1 per cent. Pending Claims There were 3.1 million asylum-seekers with pending claims at the end of 2017, a substantial increase on the 2.8 million individuals awaiting decisions the previous year and a continuation of an increasing trend over recent years. The largest asylum-seeker population at the end of 2017 was in the United States of America, where pending claims have continued to increase with 642,700 people, 44 per cent more than in 2016 (446,500). The increase in the asylum-seeker population was mainly a consequence of the relatively low number of decisions made on cases during the year. Although the United States received the most asylum applications in 2017, it made only 65,600 substantive decisions, fewer than Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, and Uganda. In Germany, the asylum-seeker population declined by 27 per cent from 587,300 at the end of 2016 to 429,300 at the end of 2017, thanks to the processing of the backlog of applications. As in 2016, Germany made the most substantive decisions of any country by a large margin with 573,600 decisions in 2017. 45