Editing Refugee (section)

===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.