Population figures
Total country population
6,029,679
Forcibly displaced population
Refugees (under UNHCR's mandate):
111
Asylum-seekers:
245
IDPs (of concern to UNHCR):
71,500
Other people in need of international protection:
0
Other
Statelessness persons
0
Host community
133,964
Others of concern to UNHCR
54,412
Country context
El Salvador is located in Central America, bordered by Guatemala to the west, Honduras to the north and east, and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The protection of refugees is framed by El Salvador’s accession to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol in 1983, implemented domestically through the Law on the Determination of the Status of Refugees (Regulation No. 918 of 2002), which defines refugee status, procedural safeguards and the inter-ministerial Commission for the Determination of Refugee Status. Refugees and asylum seekers predominantly originate from neighboring Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua and reside mainly in urban settings without formal camps.
El Salvador enacted the Special Law for the Care and Integral Protection of Victims of Violence in Conditions of Forced Displacement in 2020, aligning with the 1998 Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. Legal advancements also include commitments made in 2023 to reform the 2002 Law for Determining Refugee Status and to ratify the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.
...Further on statelessness, El Salvador acceded to the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons in 2016 but is yet to join the 1961 Convention. In 2019, the Immigration Law was amended to allow stateless individuals and those without proof of nationality to apply for permanent residency, but challenges remain in the identification and response to statelessness due to the lack of procedural mechanisms.
In 2020, the Special Law for the Aid and Integral Protection of Persons in a Condition of Internal Forced Displacement established a rights-based framework aligned with the UN Guiding Principles, recognizing rights to security, family reunification and remedies; it defines ‘internal displacement’ in line with those Principles, while limiting its scope to violence-induced cases and requiring a system for registration and monitoring.
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Sources: UNHCR Refugee Data finder https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/ | 2024 mid-year figures. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2022). World Population Prospects 2022, Online Edition https://population.un.org/wpp/assets/Files/WPP2022_Data_Sources.pdf