The number of people forced from their homes by war and violence has hit a shocking 122.1 million worldwide, even as the money to help them keeps disappearing, according to the new United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)’s report. That’s up from 120 million last year and represents a full decade of relentless increases in human displacement. The main culprits remain the same bloody conflicts that just won’t end – Sudan, Myanmar, Ukraine – while humanitarian funding has been slashed to pieces. The only good news is that nearly 2 million Syrians have finally been able to go home after more than ten years in exile.
Sudan has overtaken Syria as the world’s biggest displacement crisis, with 14.3 million people either refugees or displaced inside their own country. Syria follows with 13.5 million, then Afghanistan with 10.3 million, and Ukraine with 8.8 million displaced people. These numbers tell the story of a world where stopping wars seems impossible, leaving millions of families torn from everything they know. Most displaced people – about 73.5 million – never even make it across a border and remain stuck inside their own countries.
Despite what many people in wealthy countries think, most refugees don’t end up in Europe or North America. About 67% stay in neighboring countries, and poor and middle-income nations host nearly three-quarters of the world’s refugees. Meanwhile, 60% of all displaced people never leave their home country at all, often trapped in dangerous situations with little help. This puts enormous strain on countries that can least afford it.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi painted a grim picture of today’s conflicts and their human cost. He pointed to how modern warfare creates particularly brutal conditions that force people to flee, while international relations have become increasingly unstable. The failure to find peace in major conflicts keeps feeding this displacement crisis year after year.
The funding crisis makes everything worse – while displacement has nearly doubled over the past decade, UNHCR’s budget sits at roughly the same level as 2015. This leaves the agency scrambling to help millions more people with the same resources, putting refugees and displaced families at even greater risk when they’re already at their most vulnerable.
