{"id":36758,"date":"2026-06-11T09:26:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T07:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&p=36758"},"modified":"2026-06-11T09:26:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T07:26:29","slug":"unhcr-reports-decline-in-displacement-ongoing-refugee-crisis","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/unhcr-reports-decline-in-displacement-ongoing-refugee-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"UNHCR reports decline in displacement, ongoing refugee crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"
The number of people displaced worldwide by conflict and persecution fell in 2025 for \u200bthe first time in a decade, but levels of refugees facing long-term displacement remain unacceptably high, a United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR)report said on Thursday.<\/div>\n
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Last year, 5.4 million people fled their homes, bringing the total number of refugees or people in refugee-like situations worldwide to 41.6 million, including 6 million Palestinian refugees, UNHCR said.<\/div>\n
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At the same time, around 14.7 million refugees and internally displaced people returned home, a \u200b50% increase on the previous year and the second-highest figure recorded since 1965, the agency found.<\/div>\n
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Most returns were to \u200bsix countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Myanmar.<\/div>\n
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However, many returned \u2060to difficult conditions marked by limited access to basic services, widespread infrastructure damage and ongoing insecurity, raising concerns over the sustainability \u200band safety of their return, UNHCR said.<\/div>\n
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About 2.9 million Afghans returned in 2025, including 1.9 million refugees – five times higher than the previous \u200byear, driven mainly by stricter policies in neighbouring Iran and Pakistan, with many reporting they had little choice but to leave, UNHCR found.<\/div>\n
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This sharp rise reduced the global Afghan refugee population from 5.8 million in 2024 to 3.7 million in 2025, the report said.<\/div>\n
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Syria, which had been one of \u200bthe world\u2019s largest displacement crises for more than a decade, saw around 1.3 million people return in 2025, nearly triple the \u200bprevious year, following the fall of Bashar al-Assad\u2019s government in December 2024.<\/div>\n
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This reduced the global Syrian refugee population from 6 million to 4.9 million \u200cby the \u2060end of 2025.<\/div>\n
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\u201cHowever, many returnees face serious challenges, including insecurity, widespread destruction, weak economic conditions, limited services and jobs, and continued sporadic violence in parts of the country,\u201d the report said.<\/div>\n
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The report noted that the crisis in the Middle East has already shaped global displacement trends in 2026.<\/div>\n
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Around 3.2 million people have been temporarily displaced in Iran since joint United States and Israeli strikes at the end \u200bof February, while about one million \u200bpeople have been forced from \u2060their homes in Lebanon since the start of the war on March 2, amid Israeli strikes and evacuation orders, UNHCR said.<\/div>\n
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–Reuters–<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":36389,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-36758","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"United Nations Refugee Agency report","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36759,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36758\/revisions\/36759"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=36758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}