São Paulo – The number of people forcibly displaced by war, persecution, violence, and human rights abuses stood at a record 108.4 million in late 2022. Today, it is approximately 110 million. One in every 74 people are forced to leave their home.
The figure is from the Global Trends report released Wednesday (14) by the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) and more than doubled since 2011.
Of the global total, 58%, representing 62.5 million people, were internally displaced. The number of refugees soared to 5.7 million at the end of 2022.
Behind these number are also 35.3 million refugees, 5.4 million asylum-seekers, and a further 5.2 million other needing international protection. Three countries concentrate 67% of the refugees: Syria (6.5 million), Afghanistan and Venezuela (5.2 million each).
The report highlighted that low- and middle-income countries, rather than wealthy nations, continue to shoulder the burden of hosting displaced people. Around 76% of refugees fled to low- and middle-income countries, while 70% stayed in neighboring countries. The countries hosting the most refugees are Turkey, Iran, Colombia and Germany.
Refugees
The UNHCR stressed that last year saw a 35% increase in the number of refugees from the previous year. Some 5 million people got their refugee status in 2022, while 5.4 million are still waiting for the decision on the recognition of their status. Last year the number of such requests increased 35% from the previous year, from 1.7 million to 2.6 million.
The head of Brazil’s National Committee for Refugees (CONARE), Sheila de Carvalho, said Brazil has now the largest number of requests for recognition of refugee status. “Almost 100,000 were already analyzed, but every month other 5,000 are submitted,” she said.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
