Displaced persons fall for first time in decade, but millions return to war-torn nations

For the first time in a decade, the number of people forced from their homes fell in 2025. The United Nations counted 117.8 million displaced persons—refugees and internally displaced people combined—a four percent drop from the year before. On the surface, this looks like progress. It is not.

The decline does not reflect a safer world. Instead, it reflects millions of people returning to countries still wracked by violence, still lacking basic services, often because they had no real choice. Host nations have made conditions so difficult and unwelcoming that departure feels like the only option. Paula Barrachina, a spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency, puts it plainly: these returns may look voluntary on paper, but the pressure behind them is real. "There are times when those conditions are so difficult and hostile that people feel they have no other option," she says. "That is not a free choice, even if it appears to be one."

Afghanistan, Sudan, and Syria account for more than ninety percent of all returns, despite the fact that all three remain deeply unstable. Sudan, gripped by what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis, saw 651,500 refugees and 2.9 million internally displaced people return anyway. Afghanistan, now governed by the Taliban, has systematically erased the rights of women and girls—the UN describes it as "a form of gender apartheid"—and the economy is in freefall. Yet 2.9 million Afghans returned last year, nearly two million of them refugees, mostly from Iran and Pakistan, driven back by ultimatums, permit cancellations, and deportation threats. Syria, after fourteen years of war, experienced the largest single return: 1.3 million refugees and two million internally displaced people crossed back over borders. More than seven in ten reported feeling safer. Yet ninety percent of Syria's population remains in poverty, and only one in ten returnees with housing considers it livable.

In Europe, the political climate has hardened dramatically. Germany suspended parts of its humanitarian admission programs in 2025. The European Union has intensified negotiations with Taliban authorities to facilitate the return of Afghans without international protection status—a move unthinkable just four years ago when the Taliban first returned to power. Nineteen EU member states and Norway have now asked the European Commission to find ways to return irregular Afghan migrants and to negotiate a common return policy, both voluntary and forced, despite UNHCR warnings about the protection risks that persist in Afghanistan. The new European Pact on Migration and Asylum, set to take effect soon, is designed to accelerate deportations and speed up procedures for those denied protection.

The data also demolish a common myth: that wealthy Western nations bear the heaviest burden of refugees. The truth is far different. Sixty-five percent of all refugees remain in a neighboring country. The six largest host nations are Iran, Uganda, Turkey, Germany, Colombia, and Chad. Sixty-eight percent of the world's refugees live in low- or middle-income countries; twenty-six percent live in the least developed nations on earth. Poor countries, not rich ones, carry the weight.

Refuge, moreover, is rarely temporary. Seventy percent of the world's refugees have lived outside their home country for at least five years. In East and Southern Africa, the situation is grimmer still: more than half of refugees and asylum seekers have been displaced for more than fifteen and a half years. Thirty-eight percent of all displaced people are children.

Meanwhile, resettlement has collapsed. In 2025, only 81,800 refugees were admitted to third countries through resettlement programs—less than half the previous year—even though UNHCR estimated that 2.9 million refugees needed relocation. The United States suspended its resettlement program, and the drop has been severe. Humanitarian funding itself has been slashed by more than twenty-three percent in 2025, down to 174.3 billion dollars, according to the OECD. This is the threat that most worries Barrachina, precisely because it is invisible and generates few headlines. At least 14.7 million returnees are going back to extremely fragile contexts and still need support to rebuild their lives. "Cutting humanitarian funding does not reduce displacement," Barrachina says. "It only makes it more dangerous."