Refugee Exodus: Iran and Turkey Host Millions, Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine Lead Contributors

Global report by Internal Displacement showed that 75.9 million people from 116 countries were internally displaced at the end of 2023. This is a 51% increase in internal displacement from 2022 and is expected to rise in the coming years. The reasons for these displacements include conflicts between countries and natural disasters which made people leave and live at borders. According to the data, 20.5 million people were internally displaced because of ongoing conflicts in 2023 while 26.4 million got internally displaced because of natural disasters.

The countries with the highest internal displacement rates because of conflicts in 2023 were Republic of Congo, Palestine (Gaza), Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar. The total number of people displaced was 68.3 million. The countries with the highest rate of internal displacement due to natural disasters in 2023 were Turkey, China, Bangladesh, Somalia and the Philippines. The natural disasters these countries experienced were earthquakes, floods and storms.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 114 million people were forced to be displaced all over the world in 2022. Data from mid-2023 showed that 115 million people who have been forcibly displaced cannot go back to their homes. UNHCR has predicted that the number of forcibly displaced people can reach 130.8 million by the end of 2024. It is important to note that this number of internally displaced people is probably higher than what UNHCR had reported.

Year	IDPs of concern to UNHCR	Refugees under UNHCR's mandate	Palestine refugees UNRWA mandate	Asylum-seekers	Other people in need of international protection	Stateless persons	Others of concern
1956	0	1767975	924922	0	0	0	0
1960	0	1656664	1136487	0	0	0	0
1970	0	2464730	1445022	0	0	0	0
1980	0	8454917	1863162	0	0	0	0
1990	0	17395914	2466516	0	0	0	0
2000	5998501	12129079	3806055	947322	0	0	1653841
2010	14697804	10548835	4691079	835969	0	3463073	1255578
2020	48557439	20661846	5703521	4184926	3862102	4179349	3940730
2023	57013324	30510629	5936247	6081133	5322120	4391680	5758910

UNHCR has also reported that about 36.5 million refugees had been living under UNHCR or UNRWA in mid-2023. The countries with the highest number of refugees are the ones which are near to countries experiencing wars or conflicts. Take Iran as an example where 798,343 people were living as refugees in 2021 but these numbers changed to 3,425,091 in 2022. Turkey has about 3.4 million refugees out of which 3.3 million are from Syria.

Country of Asylum (as of 2023 data)	Refugees under UNHCR’s mandate	Asylum-seekers	IDPs of concern to UNHCR	Stateless persons	Others of concern
Iran (Islamic Rep. of) (IRN)	3,443,522	7	0	7	0
Türkiye (TUR)	3,368,976	260,605	0	439	0
Germany (DEU)	2,509,506	349,034	0	29,562	0
Pakistan (PAK)	2,080,501	48,893	0	59	139
Uganda (UGA)	1,512,681	48,956	0	67,000	0
Russian Federation (RUS)	1,249,342	773	0	93,802	0
Poland (POL)	989,877	3,820	0	1,425	1,328
Bangladesh (BGD)	961,801	16	0	961,729	0
Sudan (SDN)	926,433	33,272	3,020,517	0	3,697
Ethiopia (ETH)	921,822	4,038	2,123,435	0	610

Many people flee from their countries and the countries with the most numbers of people fled are Syria (6.5 million), Ukraine (5.9 million), Afghanistan (6.1 million), and South Sudan (2.2 million). These are only based on the data provided by the UN so the actual number of people fled from these countries are unknown.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World