Refugee Law Data
For over a decade, Refugee Law Laboratory Director Sean Rehaag has published yearly data on outcomes in Canada’s refugee determination system. This data has frequently been used by refugee lawyers, advocates, judges, administrators, policymakers and the media. It has informed litigation and law reform strategies, prompted policy changes, and encouraged evidence-informed public debates about refugee issues.
One of the aims of the Refugee Law Laboratory is to enhance transparency in Canadian refugee adjudication by publishing data on all levels of the refugee determination system in formats that are easy to understand and to integrate into the work of other researchers.
Annual Data & Tables
2025 Refugee Claim Data and IRB Member Recognition Rates
2024 Refugee Claim Data and IRB Member Recognition Rates
2023 Refugee Claim Data and IRB Member Recognition Rates
2022 Refugee Claim Data and IRB Member Recognition Rates
2021 Refugee Claim Data and IRB Member Recognition Rates
2020 Refugee Claim Data and IRB Member Recognition Rates
2019 Refugee Claim Data and IRB Member Recognition Rates
Data for prior years available via the Canadian Council for Refugees.
Check back soon for updates about other data and analysis that the Refugee Law Lab is making available.
If there are particular datapoints that you think it would be helpful for the Refugee Law Laboratory to pursue please reach out to refugeelab@yorku.ca.
Alternative Data Presentations
To explore our refugee law data visually and interactively, visit the Refugee Law Lab Portal. The RLLP includes data obtained via Access to Information procedures from the Immigration and Refugee Board, as well as data obtained via web scraping the Federal Court’s online court dockets.
This article offers an empirical examination of different types of refugee claims in Canada. Data and code for the project is available in a Refugee Law Law Lab Github repo.
