{"chart":{"citation":"UNHCR (2026)","originalChartUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/asylum-seekers-and-refugees","selection":["World","Germany","Turkey","Syria","Ukraine"]},"columns":{"Refugees by country of asylum":{"titleShort":"Refugees by country of asylum","titleLong":"Refugees by country of asylum","descriptionShort":"People who fled their country of origin and are in need of international protection. Refugees are those who have already been granted asylum status in the country they moved to. This includes all refugees who live in this country, not just those who arrived that year.","descriptionKey":"- A refugee is a person in need of international protection, who had to flee their home country because of serious threats against which the authorities of their home country cannot or will not protect them.\n- UNHCR only considers a person a refugee if they have been granted protection in a foreign country. If a person has fled their home country and applied for asylum in another country, but is still waiting for a decision on their application, they are considered an asylum seeker.\n- In 2025, UNHCR started counting about 1 million Afghans, most of them in Iran, as \"other people in need of international protection\" instead of as refugees. Part of the fall in refugee numbers for Iran and Afghanistan in 2025 comes from this change rather than from people leaving.\n- A large group of refugees from current-day Vietnam settled in China after the Vietnam War in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These refugees and their descendants are [de facto integrated into Chinese society](https://www.unhcr.org/asia/where-we-work/countries/china), have full access to public services, and enjoy the same rights as Chinese nationals. UNHCR therefore stopped counting them in the refugee population in 2022.","descriptionProcessing":"- The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) collects data on refugee populations for each country of origin and country of asylum separately. To calculate the total number of refugees living in a country, we sum up the data from all origin countries. To calculate the total number of refugees from a country, we sum up the data from all asylum countries.\n- To calculate the number of refugees per 1,000 or 100,000 people in a country, we divide the number of refugees by the total population of the country (for the same year) and multiply by the factor. The population estimates come from a long-run dataset [maintained by Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources).\n- We remove refugee populations where the country of origin and country of asylum are the same, as refugees are defined as people who have fled their country and crossed an international border. We also remove asylum seekers where the country of origin and country of asylum are the same.","shortUnit":"","unit":"people","timespan":"1951-2025","type":"Integer","owidVariableId":1354535,"shortName":"refugees","lastUpdated":"2026-10-27","nextUpdate":"2027-10-27","citationShort":"UNHCR (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data","citationLong":"UNHCR (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Refugees by country of asylum” [dataset]. UNHCR, “Refugee Population Statistics Database Annual statistics for 2025” [original data].","fullMetadata":"https://api.ourworldindata.org/v1/indicators/1354535.metadata.json"},"World region according to OWID":{"titleShort":"World region according to OWID","titleLong":"World region according to OWID","descriptionShort":"Regions defined by Our World in Data, which are used in OWID charts and maps.","unit":"","timespan":"2023-2023","type":"Continent","owidVariableId":900801,"shortName":"owid_region","lastUpdated":"2023-01-01","citationShort":"Our World in Data","citationLong":"Our World in Data. “World region according to OWID” [dataset]. Our World in Data, “Regions” [original data].","fullMetadata":"https://api.ourworldindata.org/v1/indicators/900801.metadata.json"}},"dateDownloaded":"2026-10-31"}