Refugee

A refugee, in contrast to a migrant, is according to the Geneva Convention on Refugees applied to a person who is outside their home country of citizenship because they have well-founded grounds for fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, and is unable to obtain sanctuary from their home country or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of that country; or in the case of not having a nationality and being outside their country of former habitual residence as a result of such event, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to their country of former habitual residence. Such a person may be called an ""asylum seeker"" until considered with the status of ""refugee"" by the Contracting State where they formally make a claim for sanctuary or right of asylum.In UN parlance, the definition of the word has been expanded to include descendants of refugees, in the case of two specific groups: Palestinian refugees and Sahrawi refugees. Currently, the UN does not consider refugee status to be hereditary for any other groups.At the end of 2014, there were 19.5 million refugees worldwide (14.4 million under UNHCR's mandate, plus 5.1 million Palestinian refugees under UNRWA's mandate). The 14.4 million refugees under UNHCR's mandate were around 2.7 million more than at the end of 2013 (+23%), the highest level since 1995. Among them, Syrian refugees became the largest refugee group in 2014 (3.9 million, 1.55 million more than the previous year), overtaking Afghan refugees (2.6 million), who had been the largest refugee group for three decades. As of February 2015, Turkey hosts the most refugees of any country, having 1.7 million Syrian refugees, whilst Lebanon and Jordan have by far the most refugees per capita, at c.25% and c.11% respectively. Pakistan is second, hosting 1.6 million Afghan refugees. According to the UNHCR there are 200,000 to 500,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and only 32,355 of them are registered.