The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recently released a report titled “Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2025”, which sheds light on forced displacement around the world as result of oppression, war, violence or human rights violations. The report commented that the year 2025 marked the first time in a decade that forced displacement saw a decline. More specifically, the report mentioned that the change witnessed in 2025 reflects the large increase in the return of refugees and Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in some of the world’s largest displacement situations namely, Afghanistan, Congo, Sudan, and Syria. In figures, the report revealed that the total number of individuals that remain displaced at end of 2025 dropped to 117.8 million, down from 123.2 million at end of year 2024. More specifically, the number of refugees at end of 2025 stood at around 35.6 million (down by 1.2 million) including 27 million people under the UNHCR’s mandate, 1.5 million people in a refugee-like situation, and 7.2 million other people in need of international protection, with 36% of the total number of refugees residing in six countries: Colombia (2.8 million), Germany (2.7 million), Türkiye (2.4 million), Uganda (1.9 million), Iran (1.7 million), and Chad (1.5 million). The report added that when including Palestinian refugees under the UNRWA’s mandate (circa 6 million), the number of refugees rises to around 41.6 million at end of 2025. The UNHCR also unveiled that the number of pending individual asylum applications grew by circa 8% in 2025 to around 9 million. The report revealed that there were 68.7 million IDPs at end of 2025, 46% of whom are from five countries: Sudan (9 million), Colombia (7.2 million), Syria (6.0 million), Yemen (4.8 million), and Afghanistan (4.4 million).

On the local front, the report pointed-out that Lebanon emerged as the second largest source of Syrian refugee returns in 2025 at 465,600 out of around 1.34 million, only preceded by Türkiye (556,000), and was followed by Jordan (256,700), Iraq (37,100), and Egypt (25,600). In a related note, the report noted that the total number of Syrian refugees dropped by 18% in 2025 to 4.9 million, the majority of whom still reside in Türkiye (2.3 million), Germany (668,600), Lebanon (532,400), Jordan (420,800), and Iraq (308,200).