What exactly is a refugee?

Question

Explain (as long as you can) what a refugee is.

Answer 1

A refugee is a person who is seeking asylum in a foreign country in order to escape persecution, war, terrorism, extreme poverty, famines, and natural disaster.
as by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugee

Answer 2

Anyone escaping a dangerous situation. People who fled the violence after Hurricane Katrina were refugees, and people who've gotten themselves into political trouble in countries that execute the inconvenient are also refugees.

Answer 3

A refugee is a person who is seeking asylum in a foreign country in order to escape persecution, war, terrorism, extreme poverty, famines, and natural disaster. Some regional legal instruments further include those seeking to escape generalized violence in the definition of a refugee. Those who desire refugee status are sometimes known as asylum seekers and the practice of accepting such refugees is that of offering political asylum. The most common asylum claims to industrialized countries are based upon political and religious grounds. According to the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country. ”

The concept of a refugee was expanded by the Conventions’ 1967 Protocol and by regional conventions in Africa and Latin America to include persons who had fled war or other violence in their home country. A person who is seeking to be recognized as a refugee is an asylum seeker. In the United States a recognized asylum seeker is known as an asylee.

Refugee was defined as a legal group in response to the large numbers of people fleeing Eastern Europe following World War II. The lead international agency coordinating refugee protection is the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which counted 8.4 million refugees worldwide at the beginning of 2006. This was the lowest number since 1980.[1] The major exception are the 4.3 million Palestinian refugees under the authority of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), who are the only group to be granted refugee status to the descendants of refugees according to the above definition.[2] The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants gives the world total as 12,019,700 refugees and estimates there are over 34,000,000 displaced by war, including internally displaced persons, who remain within the same national borders. The majority of refugees who leave their country seek asylum in countries neighboring their country of nationality. The "durable solutions" to refugee populations, as defined by UNHCR and governments, are: voluntary repatriation to the country of origin; local integration into the country of asylum; and resettlement to a third country.[3]

The largest source countries of refugees are Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, and Sudan. The country with the largest number of IDPs is Sudan, with over 5 million.

Answer 4

Refugee-a person who flees for refuge or safety,esp. to a foreign country, as in time of political upheaval, war, etc.

Answer 5

a refugee is a person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country.

Answer 6

Here you go.** You can make it longer by citing examples.**