Backgrounder

Refugees and Canada’s refugee system

Worldwide, there are millions of refugees, most of whom have been living in refugee camps for a very long period of time.  These refugees are individuals with a well-founded fear of persecution or are persons at risk of torture or cruel and unusual treatment or punishment if they were to return to their country of nationality or residence. They are individuals in need of protection.

The international situation

According to trends and statistics regularly released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of refugees around the world had been declining, reaching 8.4 million in 2005, the lowest since 1980.  However, the most recent report by the UNHCR now indicates this trend has been reversed with the figure at the end of 2006 having reached almost 10 million, the highest in five years.

Two other trends are also disturbing. First, the amount of time a refugee spends in exile has increased dramatically since the 1990s, with refugees today having been in exile for an average of 17 years.  A second trend of concern is the rising number of internally displaced persons – those who have fled their homes but remain in their own countries.

Canada’s refugee system and selection process

As part of the international community, Canada is engaged in helping to find comprehensive solutions for protracted refugee situations and supporting efforts to help emerging democracies look for ways to solve many of the problems that create refugee populations in the first place.

Canada protects refugees in two ways: the domestic refugee protection system for persons making refugee protection claims from within Canada, and the Refugee and Humanitarian Resettlement Program for people seeking protection from outside Canada. Through both these programs, Canada generally accepts more than 25,000 refugees a year.

Through the domestic asylum system, Canada offers protection to people in Canada who are afraid of returning to their home country. A claim for refugee protection can be made at a port of entry or at a Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) office in Canada. Once an officer decides that a refugee protection claimant is eligible to be referred, the claim is sent to the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) for a decision on it.  

Canada provides protection if the IRB determines that the claimant is a Convention refugee (i.e., someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of nationality or habitual residence because of a well-founded fear of persecution) or a person in need of protection (i.e., someone whose removal to their country of nationality or former habitual residence would subject them to the probability of torture, risk to life, or risk of cruel and unusual treatment or punishment).

These “protected persons” may apply for permanent residence within Canada. In order to facilitate family reunification, applications for permanent residence for the family members are processed concurrently with the application of the protected person in Canada.

Through the Refugee and Humanitarian Resettlement Program, Canada works closely with international partners, including the UNHCR, to assist refugees worldwide and to help them resettle in Canada, when appropriate. This includes resettling refugees found to be disproportionately more at risk than the general refugee population.  The government’s efforts are supplemented by private sponsorships where organizations and groups of individuals also assist refugees and other people in similar circumstances in rebuilding their lives in Canada. 

In selecting refugees under this program, Canada relies on the UNHCR and other referral organizations and private sponsoring groups to identify and refer refugees for resettlement.  In exceptional circumstances, refugees from specific countries may apply directly for resettlement to Canada. Refugees are persons who have been forcibly displaced from their homeland as a result of having suffered severe persecution, including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, forced labour or ethnic cleansing. Before accepting a person as a refugee, CIC will make sure that person does not have another resettlement option, cannot go home or cannot stay in the country where they initially sought asylum. Once selected, individuals undergo medical, security and criminality screening.

In the past year

Over the last 12 months, working with the UNHCR and other countries, we:

• have accepted to resettle, over the next three to five years, up to 5,000 Bhutanese refugees who have been living in camps in Nepal since the early 1990s;
• have begun resettling – and will continue to do so over 2007 and 2008 – up to 2,810 Karen refugees from Burma who have been living in camps in Thailand since the 1990s;  
• are assisting Iraqi refugees who have sought asylum in neighboring countries; and
• are continuing to resettle refugees in need throughout the world.

In Canada, working with private sponsors and service-providing agencies across the country, we offered assistance to:

• close to 3,000 privately sponsored refugees, predominantly from Africa and the Middle East;
• over 7,300 government assisted refugees from around the world; and
• more than 15,000 in-Canada protected persons and their 6,000 overseas dependants.

Did you know?

• The assessment of each refugee protection claim is based on its own merits and each individual’s circumstances.

• Since 2002, Canada has been among the top three resettlement countries in the world. In 2005, Canada resettled 10,400 refugees who accounted for 13% of the refugees resettled globally that year.

• Over the past five years, Canada has granted permanent residence to more than 147,000 refugees.

• Canada has provided protection to more than 800,000 displaced persons and refugees since World War II.   
  

• In 2006, the top 10 source countries for refugees selected under Canada’s resettlement program were:
  1. Afghanistan
  2. Colombia
  3. Ethiopia
  4. Burma
  5. Sudan
  6. Democratic Republic of the Congo
  7. Somalia
  8. Iran
  9. Eritrea
  10. Iraq

In 2007, including refugees resettled from abroad and those granted protection from within Canada, Canada anticipates granting permanent residence to 25,900–30,800 refugees from around the world.