UN's legally binding Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees defines a "refugee" as any person who claims to fear living in their home country for basically any reason.
The Refugee Convention was focused on European refugees in the immediate aftermath of WW2, but the subsequent 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees removed temporal/geographic restrictions and extended the Convention worldwide.
The Convention legally requires countries to naturalize "refugees" and forbids them from expelling or returning refuges. It states that "refugees" may illegally migrate to any UN member state and cannot be punished for doing so, and forbids the rejection of "refugees" based on race, religion, country of origin. See: Articles 3, 31, 32, 33, and 34.
In 2019, the UN Development Policy Analysis Division published a paper titled "Increasing Migration Pressure and Rising Nationalism," reminding nationalists/populists that it's illegal to reject or deport so-called refugees.
The Refugee Convention was focused on European refugees in the immediate aftermath of WW2, but the subsequent 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees removed temporal/geographic restrictions and extended the Convention worldwide.
The Convention legally requires countries to naturalize "refugees" and forbids them from expelling or returning refuges. It states that "refugees" may illegally migrate to any UN member state and cannot be punished for doing so, and forbids the rejection of "refugees" based on race, religion, country of origin. See: Articles 3, 31, 32, 33, and 34.
In 2019, the UN Development Policy Analysis Division published a paper titled "Increasing Migration Pressure and Rising Nationalism," reminding nationalists/populists that it's illegal to reject or deport so-called refugees.