A new report released on Thursday by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reveals that, despite remaining alarmingly high, global forced displacement has decreased for the first time in a decade. At the end of 2025, one in every 70 people—or 1.4 percent of the world’s population—were forcibly displaced due to conflict, violence, human rights violations, or events that seriously disturbed public order.
Of the 117.8 million people who were forcibly displaced at the end of last year, an estimated 45 million were children. Approximately two-thirds of refugees and individuals in need of international protection resided in countries bordering their countries of origin. Concurrently, low- and middle-income countries hosted 68 percent of the world’s refugees and asylum seekers.
Mixed trends in global return movements
While an estimated 5.4 million people escaped violence and persecution by fleeing to other countries in 2025, returns gathered pace as well. Some 14.7 million displaced people returned to their areas of origin, including 10.3 million internally displaced people (IDPs) and 4.4 million refugees.
In 2025, an estimated 5.4 million people escaped violence and persecution by fleeing to other countries. However, the report showed that returns gathered pace as well. In 2025, some 14.7 million displaced people returned to their countries or areas of origin, including 4.4 million refugees and 10.3 million internally displaced people (IDPs). There was a sharp increase in returns from Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan, and Syria.
While refugee returns to Syria and IDP returns within Sudan were mainly a result of improved security in at least some parts of these countries, millions were forcibly returned from Iran and Pakistan to precarious conditions in Afghanistan. Likewise, millions of IDPs in the DRC were forced to return by a non-state armed group.
Overall, UNHCR data shows that the number of global refugees declined by 3 percent in 2025, totaling 41.6 million, while the total number of displaced individuals decreased to 117.8 million in 2025, down from 123 million in 2024.
In another positive development, nearly 46,000 stateless people acquired citizenship in 24 countries last year. However, an estimated 4.5 million stateless individuals were reported globally at the end of 2025, which is a 3 percent rise from the previous year.
Major crises and host countries
The UNHCR Global Trends report shows that more than 70 percent of refugees and others in need of international protection were from just six countries facing some of the world’s largest humanitarian crises: Afghanistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela.
Among the largest host countries for refugees and other individuals in need of international protection in 2025 were: Colombia (2.8 million), Germany (2.7 million), Turkey (2.4 million), Uganda (1.9 million), Iran (1.7 million), Chad (1.5 million), and Pakistan (1.3 million).
According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), an estimated 68.6 million people were internally displaced due to conflict or violence at the end of 2025, which is a 7 percent decrease from 2024. Sudan remains the largest internal displacement crisis globally, with 9.1 million people uprooted within the country.
Escalations in the Middle East in 2026
Since late February 2026, escalating hostilities in Iran and Lebanon have caused widespread displacement, civilian casualties, and significant damage to homes and civilian infrastructure.
As of the end of March 2026, the US-Israeli war on Iran had temporarily displaced 3.2 million people in Iran, while Israeli attacks in Lebanon have led to over 1 million IDPs in Lebanon and over 500,000 people who were forced to flee to Syria as of June 2026.
New solutions for millions of people: Shifting from aid to self-reliance
As 70 percent of refugees are trapped in exile for years, many of them living below the poverty line, Barham Salih, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, urged the international community to support a new initiative that aims to lift millions out of long-term displacement and reliance on humanitarian aid.
“For too many refugees, displacement starts as a lifeline but lasts a lifetime,” Salih said.
"Humanitarian aid saves lives, but it is not the end point and does not enable refugees to become active agents in control of their futures. We need a paradigm shift that creates a new sense of hope and opportunity for people fleeing war and persecution."
Salih outlined an ambitious goal: to halve the number of refugees in long-term displacement reliant on humanitarian assistance over the next decade, which would improve the prospects of millions of people.
According to the UNHCR, this target focuses on low- and middle-income countries and can be achieved by expanding opportunities for refugee returns, relocation, and humanitarian visas while transitioning from traditional forms of aid to self-reliance.
The initiative calls on governments, humanitarian organizations, the development sector, the private sector, and civil society to step up their efforts to empower refugees while upholding asylum and protection.
Salih laid out the steps needed to achieve this goal, which aims to bring refugees’ self-earned income, excluding humanitarian assistance, up to the national poverty line in their host country.
Another key pillar for reaching the target is including refugees in national systems, such as education, healthcare, financial services, and labor markets, to enable them to generate income and contribute to local and national economies.
“Asylum and protection are life-saving and not up for debate, but we cannot accept a future in which millions of refugees remain trapped for years or decades without realistic prospects of rebuilding their lives,” said Salih.
“We now have an ambitious, achievable and quantifiable goal to advance self-reliance and transform lives for the better. UNHCR will galvanize efforts across society to meet this challenge and create pathways out of the grinding banality of protracted displacement for millions.”
UNHCR emphasized that voluntary returns must remain the primary solution and that resolving a few major conflicts worldwide would allow millions more refugees to safely and dignifiedly return home.
Further Information
Full text: Global Trends – Forced Displacement in 2025, UNHCR, report, released June 11, 2026
https://www.unhcr.org/media/global-trends-2025-report