World Development Indicators

Refugees under the mandate of the UNHCR by country or territory of asylum

Refugees under the mandate of UNHCR, by country of asylum.

18 member states have a figure and no shape on this map. The outlines come from Natural Earth’s 110m dataset, which has no polygon for a state below a certain size, and almost all of these are small island or micro-states. They are not missing from the data — only from the picture: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahrain, Barbados, Comoros, Cabo Verde, Dominica, Micronesia, Fed. Sts., Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Malta, Mauritius, Naoero, Palau, Singapore, Samoa.

How the World Bank defines it

Refugees under the mandate of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) include individuals recognized under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, its 1967 Protocol, the 1969 Organization of African Unity (OAU) Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, the refugee definition contained in the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees as incorporated into national laws, those recognized in accordance with the UNHCR Statute, individuals granted complementary forms of protection, and those enjoying temporary protection. The refugee population also includes people in a refugee-like situation, which is a category that is descriptive in nature and includes groups of people who are outside their country or territory of origin and who face protection risks similar to those of refugees, but for whom refugee status has, for practical or other reasons, not been ascertained. Refugees under the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Palestine Refugees, are not typically included in the statistics on refugees (and people in a refugee-like situation) under the mandate of the UNHCR.

World Bank, World Development Indicators — SM.POP.RHCR.EA, CC BY 4.0.

Each state is shown at the most recent year it reports, which is not the same year for every state. Comparing a 2025 figure with a 2019 one is comparing different years, and this table does not pretend otherwise.

Where the numbers come from

Refugee Population Statistics Database, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), uri: https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/download