(Geneva) More than 114 million people are currently forcibly displaced around the world, a record number, the United Nations announced on Wednesday.
“The number of people displaced by war, persecution, violence and human rights violations around the world likely exceeded 114 million by the end of September,” said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (UNHCR) in a press release.
In the first half of 2023, population displacements were mainly caused by conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, Burma and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but also by the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and a mix of drought, floods and insecurity in Somalia.
More than half of the displaced people were forced to cross a border, the agency said.
And just three nations, Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine, are the countries of origin for almost a third of the world’s displaced people.
One in 73 people
“The world’s attention is rightly focused on the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. But globally, far too many conflicts are proliferating or intensifying, destroying innocent lives and uprooting populations,” said UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi.
“The inability of the international community to resolve conflicts or prevent new ones is causing displacement and misery. We must […] work together to end conflict and enable refugees and other displaced people to return home or start their lives again,” he wrote in a statement.
In its report compiling data for the first half of 2023, this UN agency estimates the number of displaced people in the world at 110 million in mid-June, or 1.6 million more than at the same time in 2022.
According to the UNHCR, however, this figure increased further over the following three months to “probably exceed” 114 million at the end of September.
This estimate therefore does not take into account the 1.4 million Palestinians displaced, according to the United Nations, inside the Gaza Strip since October 7 and the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.
At the end of 2022, the number of forcibly displaced people across the planet was 108.4 million.
A UNHCR spokesperson confirmed to AFP that this figure of 114 million was a record since the agency began collecting data in 1975.
More than one in 73 people worldwide are forcibly displaced, the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees has calculated.
Iran and Türkiye, main host countries
By mid-2023, there were 35.8 million people who had fled abroad and 57 million who were internally displaced (IDPs). Millions more are asylum seekers or in need of international protection.
Low- and middle-income countries alone host 75% of refugees and others in need of international protection.
The countries hosting the most refugees are Iran and Turkey, with 3.4 million each; Germany and Colombia with 2.5 million each; and Pakistan with 2.1 million.
One in six people on the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba and one in seven in Lebanon are refugees.
Nearly half of Syria’s population remained displaced as of mid-2023: 6.7 million people inside their country and 6.7 million refugees abroad and asylum seekers, most of them hosted in Turkey.
Globally, 1.6 million new individual asylum applications were made between January and June 2023, the highest number ever recorded in the first six months of a given year.
540,600 of these requests were made in the United States, 150,200 in Germany and 87,100 in Spain.
Some 3.1 million people returned home between January and June, including 2.7 million displaced people.