Afghanistan: forty-six years, and counting
No country in this dataset compares: since 1979 Afghanistan has spent decades as the world’s largest origin of refugees — and the 2025 story is returns and deportations on an unprecedented scale.
A line that begins in 1979
UNHCR's first record of Afghan refugees appears in 1979: 500,000 people — the year of the Soviet invasion. Across the 75 years of data, Afghanistan has spent 34 years as the world's largest origin — longer than any other country. The peak came in 2023: 6,403,144.
The neighbours carried most of it
Most Afghans fled to two neighbours. Iran's hosting peaked in 1991 at 4,404,995; Pakistan's in 1989 at 3,275,715 — both still among the largest hosting figures ever recorded. Asylum is, above all, something neighbours do.
2025: returns — and deportations
The largest return year had long been 2002, with 1,957,955 people. The latest data (2025) records 1,947,183 returnees — nearly matching that record. Return is not necessarily voluntary: this year's figure includes large-scale deportations. Meanwhile 3,199,023 people remain displaced inside Afghanistan, and 2,671,560 remain refugees abroad (2,712,869 in 2021).
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page is computed at build time from the data this site publishes (source: UNHCR Refugee Population Statistics Database, data as of 2025-12-31) — never hand-written, and corrected automatically with every data update. Definitions and caveats: methodology; the full series: the Afghanistan country page.