Analysis ·
Refugees go next door
The states hosting the most displaced people are mostly the ones bordering the crisis, and several are producing refugees and sheltering them at the same time.
UNHCR records 28,460,986 refugees hosted across 191 member states in 2025. Where they are is not where the public argument about them usually takes place.
| State | Refugees hosted |
|---|---|
| Germany | 2,655,191 |
| Turkey | 2,390,414 |
| Uganda | 1,936,719 |
| Chad | 1,502,263 |
| Bangladesh | 1,178,038 |
| Pakistan | 1,159,038 |
| Ethiopia | 1,010,466 |
| Poland | 990,469 |
| Sudan | 809,816 |
| France | 788,419 |
Set that beside the states people are leaving, and the geography explains itself: almost every large host borders, or nearly borders, a large origin.
| State | Refugees abroad |
|---|---|
| Ukraine | 5,224,131 |
| Syria | 4,865,764 |
| Sudan | 2,820,737 |
| Afghanistan | 2,671,560 |
| South Sudan | 2,386,499 |
| Myanmar | 1,524,378 |
| Democratic Republic of the Congo | 1,176,489 |
| Somalia | 892,037 |
Displacement is overwhelmingly regional. People cross one border, not several, and they stop in the first state that will have them — which means the countries carrying the largest numbers are usually the ones with the least distance from the crisis, not the most capacity to absorb it.
Sheltering and producing refugees at once
The clearest evidence that this is proximity rather than choice is the set of states that appear in both tables above: hosting people at scale while their own population is displaced abroad.
| State | Refugees hosted | Its own refugees abroad |
|---|---|---|
| Sudan | 809,816 | 2,820,737 |
A state in that position is not a destination in any ordinary sense. It is a place people are moving through, in both directions, at the same time — and the same borders appear again in the peacekeeping figures, because several of the largest troop contributors are also among the largest hosts.
What these numbers are. UNHCR’s own reporting categories for 2025, not a census: they count people of concern to UNHCR, so a state absent from a column has no recorded population in that category, which is a different claim from having none. Figures for states that report their own numbers follow those states’ definitions. “Refugees abroad” counts people originating from a state and recorded as refugees elsewhere; internally displaced people are counted separately and are not in these totals.
People of concern, state by state
Where this page comes from
- UNHCR Refugee Data Finder — Unassessed · source