Quick facts
Need a checkable number? Whether you are writing, researching, teaching, or just verifying something — every figure on this page is computed daily from the data, reproducible on the map in one click, with ready-to-paste attribution. Data as of 2025-12-31.
Numbers ready to cite (2025)
| Fact | Figure | Verify |
|---|---|---|
| People of concern worldwide | 116,310,473 | map → |
| Of those: forcibly displaced refugees + asylum-seekers + IDPs + OIP | 108,876,228 | method → |
| One person in N on Earth is forcibly displaced | 1 in 76 | method → |
| Refugees (crossed a border) | 28,461,306 | map → |
| Internally displaced (never crossed) | 64,239,352 | map → |
| Largest hosts (top 3) | Germany, Türkiye, Uganda | map → |
| Largest origins (top 3) | Ukraine, Syria, Sudan | map → |
| Share of refugees in the top-5 hosts | 34% | records → |
Ready-made starting points
- Largest one-year rise in hosting ever: Iran, 2022, +2,626,748.
- Largest one-year decline ever: Iran, 2025, -2,718,743 (a decline is not necessarily returns — see the reading notes in the record library).
- All-time per-capita hosting record: Hong Kong SAR, China, 1964, 357.1 per 1,000 residents (story).
- Longest-running #1 origin: Afghanistan, 34 years (story).
For the full tables of extremes, see the record library.
Attribution (paste as-is)
Source: UNHCR Refugee Population Statistics Database (data as of 2025-12-31), via Where They Went (https://wheretheywent.lakkev.com), DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22087749.
Three rules in thirty seconds
- People, not water: avoid flood/wave/surge metaphors — these count people.
- A decline is not necessarily returns: it can be naturalisation, revisions, or definition changes (see the definitions timeline).
- Compare across decades with care: the legal definition of "refugee" was narrower before 1967, and the Venezuelan exodus sits mostly under OIP (a category created in 2018). Full rules: cite responsibly.
Contact and reuse
The data is free to reuse (downloads and licence). For verification help, corrections, or a specific cut of the numbers: [email protected]. This page updates daily with the data — always quote the "data as of" date.