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) today.

For the first time in 10 years, forced displacement has declined – a shift driven by large-scale returns of refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) from the world’s biggest displacement crises.

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.

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, while Germany hosts a large Ukrainian, Syrian and Afghan refugee population. A majority of the refugees in Uganda are from South Sudan; similarly, Sudanese refugees make up the largest displaced group in Chad.

The history of global displacement

In 1951, the UN established the Refugee Convention to protect the rights of refugees in Europe in the aftermath of World War II. In 1967, the convention was expanded to address displacement across the rest of the world.

the Refugee Convention was born, there were 2.1 million refugees. By 1980, the number of refugees recorded by the UN surpassed 10 million for the first time. Wars in Afghanistan and Ethiopia during the 1980s caused the number of refugees to double to 20 million by 1990.

The number of refugees remained fairly consistent over the next two decades.

However, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, together with the civil wars in South Sudan and Syria, resulted in refugee numbers exceeding 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.

In 2023, conflict in Sudan between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces increased the number of refugees to 1.5 million.

In the same year, Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip had a devastating toll on the Palestinian population. Nearly all of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people has been displaced, with many having been forced to flee multiple times.

More recently, the US-Israel war on Iran has caused a new displacement crisis in Lebanon following the resumption of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, with Israel issuing sweeping forced displacement orders for southern Lebanon and launching a ground invasion alongside its aerial bombardment.

Largest wave of refugee returns

In 2025, the number of refugees and IDPs returning home rose by 50 percent compared with 2024, with just more than 14.7 million returning. This marks the largest wave of returns recorded by the UNHCR.

The UNHCR warns that the conditions for refugee returns are far from ideal, with many people returning to violence and instability, raising questions about the dangers facing those who go back to their country of origin. (Al Jazeera)

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