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Refugee population by country or territory of origin

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What you should know about this indicator

A refugee is defined as a person in need of international protection, being outside their country of origin, because of serious threats against which the authorities of their home country cannot or will not protect them.

Refugees 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 refugee-like situations.

Refugee population by country or territory of origin
Number of by the country of origin. This measures the total number of refugees from the country; not the number per year.
Source
UNHCR (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
July 25, 2024
Next expected update
January 2025
Date range
1951–2023
Unit
people

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The database contains information about forcibly displaced populations spanning more than 70 years of statistical activities. It covers displaced populations such as refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people, including their demographics. Stateless people are also included, most of who have never been displaced. The database also reflects the different types of solutions for ett displaced populations such as repatriation or resettlement.

It includes UNHCR data collected through its annual statistical activities with some data going back as far as 1951, the year UNHCR was created.

Retrieved on
July 25, 2024
Retrieved from
https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/download/?url=q0TpTi
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Refugee Population Statistics Database, UNHCR, 2024 (https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/)

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
  • The data collected by the UNHCR describes movement of refugees between individual regions. To calculate the total number of refugees in a region, we sum up the data from all origin countries. The same applies to calculating all refugees from one country of origin.
  • To calculate the number of refugees per 1,000 people in a country, we divide the number of refugees by the total population of the country and multiply by 1,000. The population estimates come from a long-run dataset maintained by Our World in Data.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Refugee population by country or territory of origin”, part of the following publication: Fiona Spooner, Tuna Acisu, Hannah Ritchie, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Max Roser and Marcel Gerber (2022) - “Migration”. Data adapted from UNHCR. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/refugee-population-by-country-or-territory-of-origin [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

UNHCR (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

UNHCR (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Refugee population by country or territory of origin” [dataset]. UNHCR, “Refugee Population Statistics Database 2023” [original data]. Retrieved November 7, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/refugee-population-by-country-or-territory-of-origin