Among those displaced at the end of 2025, 41.6 million were considered refugees, including nearly 5.4 million people who fled across borders to become refugees in the course of the year, Thursday’s report showed.
A full 60 per cent of those new refugees fled from just eight countries, including nearly a million coming from war-ravaged Sudan alone, and almost 800,000 fled from Ukraine.
The report also pointed to several crises driving mass displacement since the start of this year. They included the Mideast war launched by United States and Israel in February, which it said had forced 3.2 million people from their homes in Iran alone.
And in Lebanon, Israeli attacks since March have displaced more than one million people, the UNHCR pointed out.
The conflicts in Iran and Lebanon had spurred many refugees hosted there to return home since the start of the year, often under adverse circumstances, including to Syria and Afghanistan.
REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT NEEDED
The UN refugee agency meanwhile voiced concern over a narrowing space for refugee resettlement last year, estimating that the number of refugees needing to resettle in third countries stood at 2.9 million.
The number of resettlement spots had reached 188,800 in 2024 – its highest level in four decades.
But last year, the number was more than halved to just 81,800, the report showed, pointing in particular to a sharp decline in the numbers accepted by the United States.
“The gap between places and needs is enormous and has been widening,” the agency warned.
Salih, a former Iraqi president who was once a refugee himself, also warned that forced displacement was becoming increasingly drawn out, often lasting years and even decades.
“Today, 70 per cent of refugees are living in protracted situations,” he pointed out.
This was unsustainable, he insisted, calling on countries to back a new initiative aimed to lift millions out of long-term displacement and reliance on humanitarian aid.
“Humanitarian assistance was designed for emergencies. It was never intended to sustain generations of people indefinitely,” he said.
The new initiative, he said, aims to slash in half the number of refugees in long-term displacement over the next decade by developing opportunities for voluntary returns, resettlement and humanitarian visas.
He voiced hope that countries would get onboard, realising that “there is a pathway to having a more sustainable situation”.