South Africa - Refugee population by country or territory of asylum

Refugee population by country or territory of asylum

The value for Refugee population by country or territory of asylum in South Africa was 76,754 as of 2020. As the graph below shows, over the past 27 years this indicator reached a maximum value of 250,000 in 1993 and a minimum value of 6,816 in 1997.

Definition: Refugees are people who are recognized as refugees under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees or its 1967 Protocol, the 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, people recognized as refugees in accordance with the UNHCR statute, people granted refugee-like humanitarian status, and people provided temporary protection. Asylum seekers--people who have applied for asylum or refugee status and who have not yet received a decision or who are registered as asylum seekers--are excluded. Palestinian refugees are people (and their descendants) whose residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948 and who lost their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. Country of asylum is the country where an asylum claim was filed and granted.

Source: Data before 2018 are from United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Statistics Database, Statistical Yearbook and data files, complemented by statistics on Palestinian refugees under the mandate of the UNRWA as published on its website. Data

See also:

Year Value
1993 250,000
1994 91,894
1995 101,408
1996 22,645
1997 6,816
1998 8,387
1999 14,539
2000 15,058
2001 18,594
2002 23,336
2003 26,552
2004 27,675
2005 29,716
2006 35,086
2007 36,732
2008 43,542
2009 47,972
2010 57,899
2011 57,899
2012 65,225
2013 65,976
2014 112,182
2015 121,635
2016 91,018
2017 88,694
2018 89,285
2019 78,395
2020 76,754

Classification

Topic: Labor & Social Protection Indicators

Sub-Topic: Migration