Emerging from the shadows of the second World War, the United Nations sought to build a universally applicable structure to support the millions of displaced people. Following up on the establishment of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1949, member-countries also went on to adopt the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1951, which set the ball rolling for how the world has shaped its response to a seemingly constant humanitarian crisis.
A French Red Cross volunteer welcomes refugees coming from Saint-Nazaire in January 1945 in Nantes, during the Second World War. | Photo Credit: AFP
In 1951, when the Refugee Convention was adopted, the focus of the signatory governments was on rebuilding a fragile European continent. It thus went on limit the definition of a refugee to those displaced by the “events occurring in Europe before 1951”. At the time, the United Nations was looking to bring under its mandate somewhere between 1.5 million to 2 million people. By 1967, this number had ballooned enough, so as to trigger the 1967 Protocol that removed the limits set in the geographical and temporal context of World War II.
A picture dated 1946 shows Jewish families fleeing from Poland and crossing Czechoslovakia to the UNRA camps in the U.S. zones of Austria and Germany. All their belongings with them, the Jewish refugees arrived in Bratislava and are waiting for transport to carry them on to Vienna. | Photo Credit: AFP
Refugees have since then been defined as any person who “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of [their] nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail [themself] of the protection of that country”.
The 1951 Refugee Convention will complete 75 years, this year. The status and rights-based instrument is now applicable to over 40 million individuals. On World Refugee Day 2026, have a look at the trends that are shaping the current crisis:
As per UNHCR’s Global Compact on Refugees 2025, and the agency’s latest Global Trends report, the growth in the number of refugees has slowed down since 2022, and has in fact stabilised. Compared to 2024, there were less number of people who could be classified as refugees by the end of 2025. At 35.6 million, the UNHCR reported a decline of 3% in the total number of refugees, apart from the six million Palestinian refugees under the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Palestinians sit overlooking a tent camp sheltering displaced people, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, on June 18, 2026. | Photo Credit: Reuters
In addition to this, the agency reports about 68.7 million people who have been internally displaced within the borders of their home country.
A Rohingya refugee looks on at a roadside market inside a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on April 17, 2026. | Photo Credit: Reuters
The decline in the number of refugees cannot be understood in isolation as a positive indicator. The drop is in fact shaped in the presence of adverse conditions.
People from Afghanistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela ended up making the bulk of the refugees reported by the end of 2025. Among these, only Afghanistan and Syria recorded a drop in the total number of refugees. Additionally, scenarios contributing to forced displacement increased manifold in 2026, with Israel and the United States launching a war against Iran.
Afghan citizens wait to register as they attempt to return to their country, with trucks loaded with their belongings seen in the background at the Chaman border crossing in Balochistan Province, Pakistan, on October 18, 2025. | Photo Credit: Reuters
While in 2025, the number of people who remain forcibly displaced fell by over five million from 2024 to 117.8 million, the UNHCR estimates the 2026 figures to remain at similar or slightly lower levels. This includes 68.7 million of those who have been displaced internally primarily due to conflict and violence. Close to half of these people originate from Sudan. Colombia, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan.
A Sudanese refugee father from Al-Fashir rides on a motorized cart with his family travelling between Chad and Sudan amid the ongoing conflict between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese army, at the Tine border post in eastern Chad, on November 22, 2025. | Photo Credit: Reuters
The UNHCR in 2025 also reported about 4.5 million ‘stateless’ people, with Rohingyas forming the largest group among them.
A family shelters in a tent mounted on a car in a field in the desert countryside of Deir al-Zor, Syria, on May 8, 2026. | Photo Credit: Reuters
In its report, the UNHCR also pointed to the fact that while children make up only about 29% of the world population, the add up to about 39% of the refugee population.
Most displaced people choose to find temporary shelter in the vicinity of their country or region of origin. Accordingly, UNHCR notes that about 65% of all refugees and those in need of international protection end up in neighbouring countries.
Accordingly, if one were to map the countries surrounding the ones from where the most number of refugees emanate, it reflects the disproportionate burden that is shared by the economically weaker countries.
A migrant carries a child as she along with others continue their journey to the U.S. border, in Acandi, Colombia, on July 9, 2023. | Photo Credit: Reuters
Low and middle-income countries end up hosting a bulk (68%) of the refugees, despite having a significantly less share of the global GDP. About 36% of refugees are hosted in just six countries – Colombia, Germany, Turkiye, Uganda, Iran and Chad.
Afghan nationals board a bus as they arrived in Germany from Pakistan at Hannover Airport, after legal and diplomatic pressure pushed Germany to resume a scheme that allows the entry of vulnerable Afghans, in Hannover, Germany, on September 1, 2025. | Photo Credit: Reuters
Some of the least-developed countries have collectively provided shelter to 9.4 million refugees in 2025.
The aforementioned disproportionate burden-sharing ends up having a negative cascading effect on where the refugees finally end up.
Afghan refugee children play next to trucks loaded with their family's belongings as they wait to return Afghanistan along a highway in Landi Kotal, Pakistan, on April 9, 2025. | Photo Credit: AP
About 4.4 million such people returned back to their countries of origin, thereby removing their refugee status. Among these, over 90% returned to Afghanistan, Syria and Sudan. Combining this figure with those returnees who were displaced internally, the UNHCR recorded one of the highest return period.
Trucks and vans carrying around 60 displaced families arrive in their village after more than five years in the Atmeh camps near the Syrian-Turkish border, in Kafr Sijna, south of Idlib, Syria, on May 18, 2025. | Photo Credit: AP
However, the agency also points out that these refugees more often than not ended up returning to adverse and hostile conditions. Refugees from Afghanistan became the largest group to return, but this homecoming was preceded by unfavourable policies pushing them out of the countries they were seeking refuge in.
In Afghanistan, and elsewhere, refugees ended up returning to broken down systems that struggled to accommodate them. Sudan and Syria also ended up receiving a large number of returnees, thus reflecting a drop in the overall refugee numbers, but UNHCR notes that these people had “little to no choice” in this matter.
A Lebanese displaced family who fled their village in south Lebanon, arrive in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, on June 10, 2026. | Photo Credit: AP
Meanwhile, as asylum seekers increased to nine million, the figures of refugees getting resettled dropped in 2025.
Since India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, it lacks any kind of national-level blueprint to govern its policies. Therefore, those seeking refuge in India end up being subject to the legislation applicable to foreign nationals.
Inmates of the Sri Lankan refugee camp at Pavalathanur near Tharamangalam in Salem district in Tamil Nadu, seen on June 21, 2023 | Photo Credit: E. Lakshmi Narayanan
The refugee population in India, is dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The Union Ministry of Home Affairs has issued directives on the protection of Sri Lankan Tamils, Tibetans, Chin refugees from Myanmar, Afghan refugees, and Chakma and Hajong refugees from Bangladesh.
A woman from Myanmar with her son at a relief camp at Sihhmui village, in Aizawl district, Mizoram. More than 31,000 people, mostly from Chin state in Myanmar, have been living in Mizoram after they fled following a military coup in February 2021. | Photo Credit: PTI
The current NDA government brought forth the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019 for those from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan applying for asylum in India. However, it limited its scope to only Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians facing religious persecution, and excluded those fleeing Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
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