The number of people forcibly displaced worldwide declined in 2025 for the first time in ten years, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR reported on Thursday. The total fell by roughly four percent to 117.8 million — equivalent to one in every 70 people on the planet — down from a peak driven by successive crises over the past decade. Yet the agency cautioned that the headline figure masks deep and ongoing suffering, with new conflicts already pushing displacement upward again in 2026.
The decline was driven largely by a record wave of returns: approximately 14.7 million refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) went back to their countries or home regions in 2025, a 50 percent increase on the previous year and the second-highest figure recorded since 1965. More than 90 percent of those returns were concentrated in just six countries — the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Myanmar. In Syria, the fall of Bashar al-Assad's government in December 2024 prompted around 1.3 million refugees to return, nearly triple the previous year's figure, shrinking the global Syrian refugee population from six million to 4.9 million. Afghanistan saw an even sharper shift: nearly two million refugees returned, many under pressure from stricter policies in Iran and Pakistan rather than by genuine choice, cutting the Afghan refugee population from 5.8 million to 3.7 million. UNHCR was explicit that a significant proportion of these returns were coerced or took place under dangerous conditions, with returnees facing insecurity, destroyed infrastructure, limited services and scarce employment.
Despite the overall decline, 117.8 million people remain displaced. Of these, 68.6 million are IDPs — people uprooted within their own countries — while 28.5 million refugees fall under UNHCR's mandate, six million Palestinian refugees remain under the separate mandate of UNRWA, and nine million people are awaiting asylum decisions. Nearly three-quarters of all refugees originate from just seven countries: Venezuela, Palestine, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan and South Sudan. The largest refugee-hosting nations are Colombia, Germany, Turkey, Uganda, Iran, Chad and Pakistan, with 65 percent of refugees living in countries neighbouring their country of origin.
The report's release comes as new crises are already reshaping the picture for 2026. Since the start of joint US-Israeli military strikes and subsequent hostilities in the region, approximately 3.2 million people have been temporarily displaced inside Iran, while around one million people have been forced from their homes in Lebanon. UNHCR also flagged a deteriorating security situation in Mali, where advances by jihadist and Tuareg rebel forces in the north and a partial encirclement of the capital Bamako by armed groups in late April threaten further large-scale displacement.
UNHCR High Commissioner Barham Salih acknowledged the complexity behind the statistics.