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Decisions on asylum claims, by origin and asylum country

Annual decisions taken on asylum claims by country of origin and country of asylum: applicants recognized as refugees under UNHCR's mandate, recognized under other forms of complementary protection, rejected, otherwise closed, and total decisions — by procedure type, decision level, and cases/persons data type.

Source: UNHCR — Refugee Population Statistics Database569,645 rowsUpdated: 9/22/2026License: CC-BY-4.0
refugeesasylummigrationunhcr

Quality

100

Attribution

UNHCR Refugee Population Statistics Database

Schema

ColumnTypeDescription
datetimestampReference year of the observation, mapped to January 1 of that year. UNHCR's population data are end-of-year figures; applications, decisions and solutions are annual totals for the reference year.
coo_namestringCountry of origin name (provider's wording).
coostringCountry of origin UNHCR code.
coo_isostringCountry of origin ISO code.
coa_namestringCountry of asylum name (provider's wording).
coastringCountry of asylum UNHCR code.
coa_isostringCountry of asylum ISO code.
series_idstringStable machine identifier built from the provider's own codes: UNHCR country-of-origin code, country-of-asylum code, and the measure or procedure-dimension codes (e.g. "AFG.AUL.refugees", "AFG.AUL.G.A.AR.C" for an asylum-applications row).
series_labelstringHuman-readable series name using the provider's own country names, e.g. "Afghanistan → Australia — Refugees".
decision_outcomestringDecision outcome (provider's measure field): recognized — the number of asylum applicants recognised as refugees under UNHCR’s mandate; other_protection — the number recognised under other forms of complementary protection; rejected — the number whose claims have been rejected; otherwise_closed — the number whose claims have been otherwise closed; total_decisions — the total number of asylum applicants for which a decision has been made in the reference period.
decision_outcome_labelstringHuman label of the decision outcome (see decision_outcome).
unitstring"persons": all measures are counts of people. For asylum applications/decisions the provider notes the data usually reflects persons but governments sometimes report cases (see app_pc/dec_pc); a case can contain one or more persons.
valueintegerObserved count. The provider marks missing observations with "-"; these become null and are dropped from the canonical frame.
procedure_typestringThe procedure type describes the authority with whom the asylum claim was lodged. It can be one of: G – Government, J – Joint, U – UNHCR.
dec_levelstringThe decision level provides more detail of the stage of the procedure. Common values are NA (New applications), RA (repeat/reopened applications) and AR (administrative review).
dec_pcstringThe data type describes whether the data provided reflects cases or persons (same meaning as app_pc for applications).

Sample rows

datecoo_namecoocoo_isocoa_namecoacoa_isoseries_idseries_labeldecision_outcomedecision_outcome_labelunitvalueprocedure_typedec_leveldec_pc
2000-01-01T00:00:00AfghanistanAFGAFGAlbaniaALBALBAFG.ALB.G.FI.C.other_protectionAfghanistan → Albania — Other forms of complementary protection (G/FI)other_protectionOther forms of complementary protectionpersons0GFIC
2000-01-01T00:00:00AfghanistanAFGAFGAlbaniaALBALBAFG.ALB.G.FI.C.otherwise_closedAfghanistan → Albania — Otherwise closed (G/FI)otherwise_closedOtherwise closedpersons5GFIC
2000-01-01T00:00:00AfghanistanAFGAFGAlbaniaALBALBAFG.ALB.G.FI.C.recognizedAfghanistan → Albania — Recognized as refugees (G/FI)recognizedRecognized as refugeespersons0GFIC
2000-01-01T00:00:00AfghanistanAFGAFGAlbaniaALBALBAFG.ALB.G.FI.C.rejectedAfghanistan → Albania — Rejected (G/FI)rejectedRejectedpersons0GFIC
2000-01-01T00:00:00AfghanistanAFGAFGAlbaniaALBALBAFG.ALB.G.FI.C.total_decisionsAfghanistan → Albania — Total decisions (G/FI)total_decisionsTotal decisionspersons5GFIC

Download sample data

Download the full sample snapshot for this dataset (sample rows, not the complete dataset).

Use with an LLM

Point any LLM at the metadata endpoint — the documentation above is machine-readable too (JSON-LD + Croissant).

cURL

curl "https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/unhcr/unhcr_asylum_decisions" | jq '{title, rows, columns_count, license}'

Python

import requests

ds = requests.get("https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/unhcr/unhcr_asylum_decisions").json()
print(ds["title"], ds["rows"], "rows")

# Sample rows for an LLM context window
for row in ds.get("sample_rows", [])[:5]:
    print(row)

API endpoint: https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/unhcr/unhcr_asylum_decisions

Tip: fetch /llms.txt for the full machine-readable catalog.