Global Refugee Numbers Drop for First Time in a Decade, But Long-Term Displacement Stays High, UNHCR Reports
The number of people displaced worldwide by conflict and persecution fell in 2025 for the first time in a decade, the United Nations refugee agency reported on Thursday, June 11. The total number of refugees or people in refugee-like situations worldwide stood at 41.6 million by end-2025, including 6 million Palestinian refugees, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Asean Media
Despite the overall decline, UNHCR said levels of long-term displacement remain unacceptably high. The report, covering full-year 2025 data, was released in Geneva. Asean Media
Last year, 5.4 million people fled their homes — a figure that, while lower than in recent years, still represents millions of people forced from their communities by violence and persecution. At the same time, the number of people returning offers a more striking data point. Asean Media
Around 14.7 million refugees and internally displaced people returned home in 2025 — a 50% increase on the previous year and the second-highest figure recorded since 1965, according to UNHCR. Most of those returns were concentrated in six countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Myanmar. Asean Media
Afghanistan: Returns Driven by Pressure, Not Choice
About 2.9 million Afghans returned in 2025, including 1.9 million refugees — five times more than the previous year. UNHCR attributed this surge primarily to stricter policies in neighbouring Iran and Pakistan, with many returnees reporting they had little choice but to leave. Asean Media
The sharp rise in Afghan returns reduced the global Afghan refugee population from 5.8 million in 2024 to 3.7 million in 2025, the report said. The speed and scale of the change set Afghanistan apart from any other displacement situation in the year’s data, but UNHCR’s framing of returns as largely involuntary raises direct questions about whether they constitute durable solutions. Asean Media
Syria: A Shift After Fourteen Years
Syria, which had been one of the world’s largest displacement crises for more than a decade, saw around 1.3 million people return in 2025 — nearly triple the figure of the previous year — following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in December 2024. This reduced the global Syrian refugee population from 6 million to 4.9 million by the end of 2025. Asean MediaModel Diplomat
UNHCR’s report cautioned that many returnees face serious challenges, including insecurity, widespread destruction, weak economic conditions, limited services, limited jobs, and continued sporadic violence in parts of the country. Model Diplomat
Internal Displacement Falls, but Sudan Remains Largest Crisis
At the end of 2025, 68.6 million people remained internally displaced due to conflict and violence — a 7% decrease from the end of 2024. The overall improvement masks the depth of individual situations. UNHCR
Sudan remains the largest internal displacement crisis globally, with 9.1 million people displaced within the country at the end of 2025. Sudan also appeared among the top six destinations for returnees — a simultaneous reality that reflects an ongoing cycle of displacement and movement within a country still experiencing active conflict. UNHCR
Seven in ten refugees under UNHCR’s mandate originate from just six countries: Afghanistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela. That concentration in a small number of protracted crises defines the character of the long-term challenge the agency describes. UNHCR
The Palestinian Dimension
The total count of 41.6 million refugees worldwide includes 6 million Palestinian refugees, UNHCR said. Palestinian refugees fall under the separate mandate of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian relief, rather than UNHCR. The ongoing war in Gaza, where Israeli military operations resumed following the collapse of a ceasefire in March 2025, continued to drive internal displacement within the Palestinian territory throughout the year. Asean Media
Funding Cuts Cloud the Outlook
The drop in displacement numbers arrives as UNHCR faces its worst financial position in a decade. By end-2025, UNHCR projected it would have $3.9 billion in available funds — a reduction of $1.3 billion, or roughly 25%, compared with 2024. Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told member states that the last time the agency had less than $4 billion was in 2015, when the number of forcibly displaced people was half of what it is today. The Citizen
The humanitarian funding crisis resulted in nearly 5,000 UNHCR staff losing their jobs and the downscaling or closure of 185 offices globally. The Citizen
Grandi said the funding cuts of recent years have been “deeply counterproductive, leading to more instability and less protection, assistance and hope.” UNHCR
Background
At the end of 2024, an estimated 123.2 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced — an increase of 7 million, or 6%, compared with the end of 2023, and a near-doubling compared with a decade earlier. The 2025 fall marks the first reversal of that trend in more than ten years. The main drivers of displacement over the past decade have included escalating conflicts in Sudan, Myanmar, Haiti, Gaza, Lebanon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Ukraine. UNHCR’s 2026 budget was set anticipating 136 million forcibly displaced and stateless people by the end of this year — a figure that now looks likely to be revised downward if 2025 trends hold. BERNAMA + 2
What Happens Next
UNHCR has identified whether the 2025 reduction continues or reverses in 2026 as depending primarily on whether peace or at least a cessation in fighting becomes achievable in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Ukraine; whether conditions for return improve further in Afghanistan and Syria; and how severely the current funding cuts affect the agency’s capacity to support safe and dignified returns. Grandi has called for sustained, flexible donor funding to preserve gains in education, child protection, and sexual violence response, and to ensure that host countries are not left to shoulder the responsibility alone. UNHCR’s annual Global Trends report serves as the principal data release against which governments and donor nations calibrate their humanitarian contributions for the year ahead. Foreign PolicyUNHCR
