Political asylum

Number of asylum seekers by the country they have come from.
  40,000 asylum seekers

  30,000 asylum seekers

  20,000 asylum seekers

  10,000 asylum seekers

  <10,000 asylum seekers (or no data)

Political asylum may be asked for when people are frightened to live in or oppressed in their own country. They then go to another country. If they are allowed to live in the new country, that is called political asylum.

People who seek asylum say that they are victims of threats, physical harm or denigration of their human dignity as violations of their human rights.^[1]

Political asylum is one of the human rights affirmed by Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a rules of international human rights law. Every country that has agreed to the United Nations Conventions Relating to the Status of Refugees must let in people whose who qualify.

People who qualify for asylum are those who can show that they might be badly treated in their own country for these reasons :

Religion
Political opinions
Membership of a particular social group or social activities
Personal lifestyle and sexual orientation.^[2]

People often confuse exiling individuals from their home country as migration to a political asylum, but that is not as it seems. Migrating with one's own will for personal reasons may be a political migration but not under government.

Those who are given political asylum are called refugees. They are often confused with "economic refugees," who move from a poor country to a richer one so that they may work and make more money, often to send back to their families.