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== History == {{See also|Right of asylum|Sanctuary}} [[File:Hercegovački begunci, Uroš Predić.jpg|thumb|right|''Refugees from Herzegovina'', painting by [[Uroš Predić]] in 1889 made in the aftermath of the [[Herzegovina Uprising (1875–77)]]]] The idea that a person who sought sanctuary in a holy place could not be harmed without inviting divine retribution was familiar to the [[ancient Greece|ancient Greeks]] and [[ancient Egypt]]ians. However, the [[right of asylum|right to seek asylum]] in a church or other holy place was first codified in law by King [[Æthelberht of Kent]] in about AD 600. Similar laws were implemented throughout Europe in the [[Middle Ages]]. The related concept of political [[exile]] also has a long history: [[Ovid]] was sent to [[Constanța|Tomis]]; [[Voltaire]] was sent to England. By the 1648 [[Peace of Westphalia]], nations recognized each other's [[sovereignty]]. However, it was not until the advent of [[romantic nationalism]] in late 18th-century Europe that [[nationalism]] gained sufficient prevalence for the phrase ''country of nationality'' to become practically meaningful, and for border crossing to require that people provide identification. [[File:Turkish refugees from Edirne.jpg|thumb|right|[[Turkish people|Turkish]] refugees from [[Edirne]], 1913]] [[File:Armenian woman and her children from Geghi, 1899.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|One million [[Armenians]] were forced to leave their homes in Anatolia in 1915 during the [[Armenian genocide]], and many either died or were murdered on their way to Syria.]] The term "refugee" sometimes applies to people who might fit the definition outlined by the 1951 Convention, were it applied retroactively. There are many candidates. For example, after the [[Edict of Fontainebleau]] in 1685 outlawed [[Protestantism]] in France, hundreds of thousands of [[Huguenot]]s fled to England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, [[South Africa]], Germany and [[Prussia]]. The repeated waves of [[pogrom]]s that swept Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries prompted mass Jewish emigration (more than 2 million [[History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union|Russian Jews]] emigrated in the period 1881–1920). Between the Crimean War of 1853–56 and World War I, at least 2.5 million Muslims arrived in the Ottoman Empire as refugees, primarily from Russia and the Balkans.{{sfn|Hamed-Troyansky|2024|p=64–65}} The [[Balkan Wars]] of 1912–1913 caused 800,000 people to leave their homes.{{sfn|Greek Turkish refugees}} Various groups of people were officially designated refugees beginning in World War I. However, when the First World War began, there were no rules in international law specifically dealing with the situation of refugees.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Segesser |first=Daniel Marc |date=2008-03-01 |title=The Punishment of War Crimes Committed against Prisoners of War, Deportees and Refugees during and after the First World War |url=https://doi.org/10.1080/02619280802442647 |journal=Immigrants & Minorities |volume=26 |issue=1–2 |pages=134–156 |doi=10.1080/02619280802442647 |s2cid=144090544 |issn=0261-9288|url-access=subscription }}</ref> ===League of Nations=== [[File:Spanish War Children001.jpg|thumb|Children preparing for evacuation from [[Spain]] during the [[Spanish Civil War]] between 1936 and 1939.]] The first international co-ordination of refugee affairs came with the creation by the [[League of Nations]] in 1921 of the High Commission for Refugees and the appointment of [[Fridtjof Nansen]] as its head. Nansen and the commission were charged with assisting the approximately 1,500,000 people who fled the [[Russian Revolution of 1917]] and the subsequent [[Russian Civil War|civil war]] (1917–1921),{{sfn|Hassell|1991|p=1}} most of them aristocrats fleeing the Communist government. It is estimated that about 800,000 Russian refugees became stateless when [[Lenin]] revoked citizenship for all Russian expatriates in 1921.<ref>{{cite web |title=Humanisten Nansen |language=no |trans-title=The humanist Nansen |url=http://www.arkivverket.no/arkivverket/Bruk-av-arkiv/Nettutstillinger/Nansen-passet/Humanisten-Nansen |website=Arkivverket.no |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130126233356/http://arkivverket.no/arkivverket/Bruk-av-arkiv/Nettutstillinger/Nansen-passet/Humanisten-Nansen |archive-date=26 January 2013}}</ref> In 1923, the mandate of the commission was expanded to include the more than one million [[Armenian people|Armenians]] who left [[Turkey|Turkish]] [[Asia Minor]] in 1915 and 1923 due to a series of events now known as the [[Armenian genocide]]. Over the next several years, the mandate was expanded further to cover [[Assyrian people|Assyrians]] and Turkish refugees.{{sfn|Nansen International Office}} In all of these cases, a refugee was defined as a person in a group for which the League of Nations had approved a mandate, as opposed to a person to whom a general definition applied.{{citation needed|date=August 2010}} The 1923 [[population exchange between Greece and Turkey]] involved about two million people (around 1.5 million [[Greeks in Turkey|Anatolian Greeks]] and 500,000 Muslims in Greece) most of whom were forcibly repatriated and denaturalized{{clarify|date=September 2015}} from homelands of centuries or millennia (and guaranteed the nationality of the destination country) by a treaty promoted and overseen by the international community as part of the [[Treaty of Lausanne (1923)]].{{efn-ua|The "[[Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations]]" was signed at [[Lausanne]], Switzerland, on 30 January 1923, by the governments of [[Kingdom of Greece (Glücksburg)|Greece]] and Turkey.}} The U.S. Congress passed the [[Emergency Quota Act]] in 1921, followed by the [[Immigration Act of 1924]]. The Immigration Act of 1924 was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially [[Jews]], Italians and [[Slavs]], who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s.{{sfn|Old fears over|2006}} Most European refugees (principally Jews and Slavs) fleeing the [[Nazis]] and the [[Soviet Union]] were barred from going to the United States until after World War II, when Congress enacted the temporary Displaced Persons Act in 1948.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://immigrationhistory.org/item/1948-displaced-persons-act/ |access-date=7 September 2023 |title=Displaced Persons Act (1948) |website=Immigration History}}</ref> In 1930, the [[Nansen International Office for Refugees]] (Nansen Office) was established as a successor agency to the commission. Its most notable achievement was the [[Nansen passport]], a [[refugee travel document]], for which it was awarded the 1938 [[Nobel Peace Prize]]. The Nansen Office was plagued by problems of financing, an increase in refugee numbers, and a lack of co-operation from some member states, which led to mixed success overall. However, the Nansen Office managed to lead fourteen nations to ratify the 1933 Refugee Convention, an early, and relatively modest, attempt at a [[human rights]] charter, and in general assisted around one million refugees worldwide.{{sfn|Nobel Peace Prize}} === Rise of Nazism, 1933 to 1944 === [[File:Czech refugees from the Sudetenland 1.gif|thumb|right|upright|[[Czechs|Czech]] refugees from the [[Sudetenland]], October 1938]] The rise of [[Nazism]] led to such a very large increase in the number of refugees from Germany that in 1933 the League created a high commission for refugees coming from Germany. Besides other measures by the Nazis which created fear and flight, Jews were stripped of German citizenship{{Efn-ua|Bankier, David "Nuremberg Laws" pages 1076–1077 from ''The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust'' Volume 3 edited by Israel Gutman, New York: Macmillan, 1990 page 1076}} by the [[Reich Citizenship Law]] of 1935.{{sfn|Reich Citizenship Law}} On 4 July 1936 an agreement was signed under League auspices that defined a refugee coming from Germany as "any person who was settled in that country, who does not possess any nationality other than German nationality, and in respect of whom it is established that in law or in fact he or she does not enjoy the protection of the Government of the Reich" (article 1).{{efn-ua|[http://www.worldlii.org/int/other/LNTSer/1936/158.pdf League of Nations Treaty Series] vol. 171, p. 77}} The mandate of the High Commission was subsequently expanded to include persons from Austria and [[Sudetenland]], which Germany annexed after 1 October 1938 in accordance with the [[Munich Agreement]]. According to the Institute for Refugee Assistance, the actual count of refugees from [[Czechoslovakia]] on 1 March 1939 stood at almost 150,000.{{sfn|Forced displacement}} Between 1933 and 1939, about 200,000 Jews fleeing Nazism were able to find refuge in France,{{sfn|France}} while at least 55,000 Jews were able to find refuge in Palestine{{sfn|Gelber|1993|pp=323-39; 326 n. 6}} before the British authorities closed that destination in 1939. [[File:Polish child refugees and war orphans in India 1941.jpg|thumb|[[Poland|Polish]] child refugees and war orphans in [[Balachadi]], [[British India]] 1941]] [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-J19568, Bei Stalingrad, russische Flüchtlinge.jpg|thumb|[[Russians|Russian]] refugees [[Battle of Stalingrad]] 1942]] On 31 December 1938 both the Nansen Office and High Commission were dissolved and replaced by the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees under the Protection of the League.{{sfn|Nansen International Office}} This coincided with the flight of 500,000 Spanish Republicans, soldiers as well as civilians, to France after their defeat by the Nationalists in 1939 in the [[Spanish Civil War]].{{sfn|Spanish Civil War}} [[File:Teheran, Iran. Polish woman and her grandchildren shown in an American Red Cross evacuation camp as they await evacuation to new homes.jpeg|thumb|[[Poland|Polish]] refugees in [[Tehran]], [[Imperial State of Iran]], at an American Red Cross evacuation camp 1943]] The conflict and political instability during World War II led to massive numbers of refugees (see [[World War II evacuation and expulsion]]). In 1943, the [[Allies of World War II]] created the [[United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration]] (UNRRA) to provide aid to areas liberated from [[Axis powers of World War II]], including parts of Europe and China. By the end of the War, Europe had more than 40 million refugees.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.unhcr.org/3ebf9ba80.html |title=The State of The World's Refugees 2000: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2000 |pages=13 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Bundy |first=Colin |date=2016 |title=Migrants, refugees, history and precedents {{!}} Forced Migration Review |url=https://www.fmreview.org/destination-europe/bundy |access-date=2022-03-09 |website=www.fmreview.org}}</ref> UNRRA was involved in returning over seven million refugees, then commonly referred to as [[displaced person]]s or DPs, to their country of origin and setting up [[displaced persons camp]]s for one million refugees who refused to be repatriated. Even two years after the end of War, some 850,000 people still lived in DP camps across Western Europe.<ref>[http://www.dpcamps.org/dpcampseurope.html DP Camps in Europe Intro] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140316114358/http://www.dpcamps.org/dpcampseurope.html |date=16 March 2014 }}, from: ''DPs Europe's Displaced Persons, 1945–1951'' by Mark Wyman</ref> After the establishment of Israel in 1948, Israel accepted more than 650,000 Jewish refugees by 1950. By 1953, over 250,000 refugees were still in Europe, most of them old, infirm, crippled, or otherwise disabled. ===Post-World War II population transfers=== After the Soviet armed forces captured eastern Poland from the Germans in 1944, the Soviets unilaterally declared a new frontier between the Soviet Union and Poland approximately at the [[Curzon Line]], despite the protestations from the Polish government-in-exile in London and the western Allies at the [[Teheran Conference]] and the [[Yalta Conference]] of February 1945. After the [[German Instrument of Surrender|German surrender]] on 7 May 1945, the Allies occupied the remainder of Germany, and the [[Berlin Declaration (1945)|Berlin declaration of 5 June 1945]] confirmed the unfortunate division of [[Allied-occupied Germany]] according to the Yalta Conference, which stipulated the continued existence of the German Reich as a whole, which would include its [[Former eastern territories of Germany|eastern territories]] as of 31 December 1937. This did not impact on Poland's eastern border, and Stalin refused to be removed from these [[Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union|eastern Polish territories]]. In the last months of World War II, about five million German civilians from the German provinces of [[East Prussia]], [[Pomerania]] and [[Silesia]] fled the advance of the Red Army from the east and became refugees in [[Mecklenburg]], [[Brandenburg]] and [[Saxony]]. Since the spring of 1945, the Poles had been forcefully expelling the remaining German population in these provinces. When the Allies met in Potsdam on 17 July 1945 at the [[Potsdam Conference]], a chaotic refugee situation faced the occupying powers. The [[Potsdam Agreement]], Article VIII signed on 2 August 1945, defined the Polish western border as that of 1937,<ref name="Potsdam Agreements">[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/truman/psources/ps_potsdam.html Agreements of the Berlin (Potsdam) Conference] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101031085625/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/truman/psources/ps_potsdam.html |date=31 October 2010 }}</ref> placing one fourth of Germany's territory under the [[Provisional Government of National Unity|Provisional Polish administration]]. Article XII ordered that the remaining German populations in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary be transferred west in an "orderly and humane" manner.<ref name="Potsdam Agreements" /> [[File:A Dutch school teacher leads a group of refugee children just disembarked from a ship at Tilbury Docks in Essex during 1945. D24064.jpg|thumb|A [[Dutch people|Dutch]] school teacher leads a group of refugee children just disembarked from a ship at [[Port of Tilbury]] in [[Essex]], [[England]], [[United Kingdom]] during 1945.]] [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 175-S00-00326, Flüchtlinge aus Ostpreußen auf Pferdewagen.jpg|thumb|[[Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)|German refugees]] from [[East Prussia]], 1945]] Although not approved by Allies at Potsdam, hundreds of thousands of [[ethnic German]]s living in Yugoslavia and Romania were deported to slave labour in the Soviet Union, to [[Allied Control Council|Allied-occupied Germany]], and subsequently to the [[German Democratic Republic]] ([[East Germany]]), Austria and the [[Federal Republic of Germany]] ([[West Germany]]). This entailed the largest [[population transfer]] in history. In all 15 million Germans were affected, and more than two million perished during the [[Expulsion of Germans after World War II|expulsions of the German population]].{{sfn|Statistisches Bundesamt, Die|1958}}{{sfn|Naimark|1995}}{{sfn|de Zayas|1977}}{{sfn|de Zayas|2006}} (See [[Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)]].) Between the end of War and the erection of the [[Berlin Wall]] in 1961, more than 563,700 refugees from East Germany traveled to West Germany for asylum from the [[Soviet occupation zone|Soviet occupation]]. During the same period, millions of former Russian citizens were [[Operation Keelhaul|forcefully repatriated]] against their will into the USSR.{{sfn|Elliott|1973|pp=253–275}} On 11 February 1945, at the conclusion of the [[Yalta Conference]], the United States and United Kingdom signed a Repatriation Agreement with the USSR.{{sfn|Repatriation Dark Side}} The interpretation of this Agreement resulted in the forcible repatriation of all Soviets regardless of their wishes. When the war ended in May 1945, British and United States civilian authorities ordered their military forces in Europe to deport to the Soviet Union millions of former residents of the USSR, including many persons who had left Russia and established different citizenship decades before. The forced repatriation operations took place from 1945 to 1947.{{sfn|Forced Repatriation to}} [[File:Palestinian refugees.jpg|thumb|220x220px|[[Palestinian refugees]] from [[Galilee]] 1948.]] At the end of World War II, there were more than 5 million "displaced persons" from the Soviet Union in [[Western Europe]]. About 3 million had been [[Forced labor in Germany during World War II|forced laborers]] ([[Ostarbeiter]]s){{sfn|Final Compensation Pending}} in Germany and occupied territories.{{sfn|Forced Labor}}{{sfn|Nazi Ostarbeiter (Eastern}} The Soviet [[POWs]] and the [[Andrey Vlasov|Vlasov]] men were put under the jurisdiction of [[SMERSH]] (Death to Spies). Of the 5.7 million [[Nazi crimes against Soviet POWs|Soviet prisoners of war]] captured by the Germans, 3.5 million had died while in German captivity by the end of the war.{{sfn|Soviet Prisoners Forgotten}}{{sfn|Soviet Prisoners-of-War}} The survivors on their return to the USSR were treated as traitors (see [[Order No. 270]]).<ref>James D. Morrow, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3078622 "The Institutional Features of the Prisoners of War Treaties,"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200220151334/https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3078622 |date=20 February 2020 }} ''International Organization'' 55, no. 4 (2001), 984</ref> Over 1.5 million surviving [[Red Army]] soldiers imprisoned by the Nazis were sent to the [[Gulag]].{{sfn|Patriots ignore greatest|2007|p=2}} Poland and [[Soviet Ukraine]] conducted population exchanges following the imposition of a new Poland-Soviet border at the [[Curzon Line]] in 1944. About 2,100,000 [[Polish people|Poles]] were expelled west of the new border (see [[Repatriation of Poles (1944–1946)|Repatriation of Poles]]), while about 450,000 [[Ukrainians]] were expelled to the east of the new border. The [[Population transfer in the Soviet Union|population transfer to Soviet Ukraine]] occurred from September 1944 to May 1946 (see [[repatriation of Ukrainians from Poland to the Soviet Union|Repatriation of Ukrainians]]). A further 200,000 Ukrainians left southeast Poland more or less voluntarily between 1944 and 1945.{{sfn|Forced migration}} According to the report of the U.S. Committee for Refugees (1995), 10 to 15 percent of 7.5 million Azerbaijani population were refugees or displaced people.<ref>{{cite web |author=UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) |date=1 September 1995 |url=http://www.refworld.org/country,COI,UNHCR,,AZE,,3ae6a6490,0.html |title=UNHCR CDR Background Paper on Refugees and Asylum Seekers from Azerbaijan}}</ref> Most of them were 228,840 refugee people of Azerbaijan who fled from Armenia in 1988 as a result of deportation policy of Armenia against ethnic Azerbaijanis.<ref>{{cite web |date=31 May 2011 |title=ECRI REPORT ON AZERBAIJAN |url=https://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/ecri/country-by-country/azerbaijan/AZE-CbC-IV-2011-019-ENG.pdf}}</ref> During the [[1948 Palestine War]], some 700,000{{sfn|Morris|2001|pp=252–258}} Palestinian Arabs or 85% of the Palestinian Arab population of territories that became Israel [[1948 Palestinian exodus|fled or were expelled]] from their homes by the Israelis.{{sfn|Morris|2001|pp=252–258}} The [[International Refugee Organization]] (IRO) was founded on 20 April 1946, and took over the functions of the [[United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration]], which was shut down in 1947. While the handover was originally planned to take place at the beginning of 1947, it did not occur until July 1947.{{sfn|United Nations Relief|1994}} The International Refugee Organization was a temporary organization of the [[United Nations]] (UN), which itself had been founded in 1945, with a mandate to largely finish the UNRRA's work of repatriating or resettling European refugees. It was dissolved in 1952 after resettling about one million refugees.{{sfn|International Refugee Organization|1994}} The definition of a refugee at this time was an individual with either a [[Nansen passport]] or a "[[certificate of identity]]" issued by the International Refugee Organization. The Constitution of the International Refugee Organization, adopted by the [[United Nations General Assembly]] on 15 December 1946, specified the agency's field of operations. Controversially, this defined "persons of German ethnic origin" who had been expelled, or were to be expelled from their countries of birth into the postwar Germany, as individuals who would "not be the concern of the Organization." This excluded from its purview a group that exceeded in number all the other European displaced persons put together. Also, because of disagreements between the Western allies and the Soviet Union, the IRO only worked in areas controlled by Western armies of occupation.
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