The latest UNHCR Global Trends report reveals 117.8 million people remain displaced globally, even as 2025 records the largest wave of returns in agency’s history.
At least 117.8 million people or one in 70 individuals worldwide remain forcibly displaced, according to a report released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
This figure represents 33 percent increase compared to five years ago. The total number of displaced people has nearly doubled over past decade.
For the first time in 10 years, forced displacement has declined. The shift is driven by large-scale returns of refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) from the world’s biggest displacement crises.
Despite the drop, the numbers remain staggering. The crisis continues to affect every region on the planet, with millions living in prolonged uncertainty far from their homes.
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Who is displaced?
The 117.8 million figure covers several distinct groups.
Of the total forcibly displaced: 68.6 million are internally displaced within their own countries due to conflict or other crises; roughly 28.5 million refugees are under UNHCR’s mandate; 9 million are asylum seekers waiting for a protection decision in another country; 7.2 million people are in need of international protection; and 6 million are Palestinian refugees under UNRWA’s mandate.
Internally displaced people account for 58 percent of all forcibly displaced people. At the end of 2025, 68.7 million people remained internally displaced due to conflict and violence, a 7 percent decrease from the end of 2024.
Sudan remains the largest internal displacement situation globally, with 9.1 million people still displaced within the country. Forty-six percent of all IDPs are displaced within just five countries: Sudan, Colombia, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
Where refugees are coming from?
Almost three-quarters, or 72 percent, of all refugees came from just seven countries: Venezuela (6.4 million), Palestine (6 million), Ukraine (5.2 million), Syria (4.9 million), Afghanistan (3.7 million), Sudan (2.8 million), and South Sudan (2.4 million).
The concentration in these seven countries reflects the scale of ongoing conflict and persecution. War, persecution, and political violence remain the primary drivers.
Who is hosting refugees?
More than one-third of the world’s refugees live in just seven countries. The largest refugee populations are in Colombia (2.8 million), Germany (2.7 million), Turkiye (2.4 million), Uganda (1.9 million), Iran (1.7 million), Chad (1.5 million), and Pakistan (1.3 million).
Some 65 percent of refugees and other people in need of international protection lived in countries neighbouring their countries of origin. Nearly all refugees in Iran and Pakistan are Afghans, while most refugees in Turkiye are Syrians.
The vast majority of refugees in Colombia are from Venezuela. Germany hosts a large Ukrainian, Syrian, and Afghan refugee population. A majority of the refugees in Uganda are from South Sudan, and Sudanese refugees make up the largest displaced group in Chad.
This pattern confirms a long-established reality. The burden of hosting displaced populations falls overwhelmingly on countries in the immediate neighbourhood of conflict zones, many of which are themselves developing nations.
Largest wave of returns in UNHCR history
In 2025, the number of refugees and IDPs returning home rose by 50 percent compared with 2024, with just over 14.7 million returning. This marks the largest wave of returns ever recorded by UNHCR.
Some 92 percent of returns were to just six countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo (3.6 million), Sudan (3.6 million), Syria (3.3 million), Afghanistan (2 million), Ukraine (718,300), and Myanmar (415,200).
The scale of returns offers some cause for optimism. However, UNHCR has flagged serious concerns about the conditions people are returning to.
UNHCR warns that the conditions for refugee returns are far from ideal, with many people returning to violence and instability. This raises serious questions about the dangers facing those who go back to their country of origin.
New crisis in Iran and Lebanon
Despite a roughly 4 percent decrease in the number of displaced people in 2025, this progress has been overshadowed by Lebanon’s fast-growing displacement crisis. Since the US-Israel war on Iran began in late March 2026, Israeli attacks have forcibly displaced more than one million, with a further 3.2 million internally displaced in Iran.
The new displacement in the Middle East threatens to reverse the progress recorded in the 2025 data. Ongoing hostilities could push numbers upward again in the next reporting cycle.
A decade of rising displacement
When the UN Refugee Convention came in shape in 1951, there were 2.1 million refugees. By 1980, the number surpassed 10 million for the first time. Wars in Afghanistan and Ethiopia during the 1980s caused the number to double to 20 million by 1990.
The US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, combined with civil wars in South Sudan and Syria, pushed refugee numbers beyond 30 million by the end of 2021. The war in Ukraine, which started in 2022, led to one of the fastest-growing refugee crises since World War II, with 5.7 million people forced to flee Ukraine in less than a year.
At the end of 2025, there were approximately 3.7 million Afghan refugees or other people in need of international protection, a decrease of 36 percent from the previous year. This sharp drop reflects both large-scale returns to Afghanistan and updated counting methods.