Senegal is located on the westernmost bulge of the African continent, bordered by Mauritania to the north, Mali to the east, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau to the south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Refugees and asylum seekers in Senegal originate chiefly from neighbouring and regional contexts—including Mali, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and the Central African Republic.  They reside predominantly in urban areas such as Dakar and in reception facilities near border towns rather than in formal camps. The Multi-Country Office for West and Central Africa based in Dakar oversees status determination for Senegal and several adjacent states, with referrals made to regional offices under the UNHCR mandate. Asylum applicants can access housing and services under civil-residency regulations pending determination.

Domestic asylum protection was first codified in 1968 by Law No. 68-27 of 5 August 1968, which applied the definitions of the 1951 Refugee Convention and Protocol and established a refugee-status commission, though it lacked an independent appeals mechanism and did not address statelessness. Decrees in 1978 and 1989 refined the commission’s composition and procedures, but substantive reform began only in 2022 with adoption of Law No. 2022-01 of 14 April 2022 on the status of refugees and stateless persons, extending the refugee framework to cover stateless persons and instituting procedural safeguards for both groups. This law represents a positive advancement by embedding statelessness determination into domestic legislation for the first time, while maintaining the established refugee-status pathways.