Did you know that Iran hosted the most refugees in 2024?
Number of Refugees in Host Countries – 2025-09-23.
Number of refugees hosted by countries in descending order in 2024.
Graph created using 2024 UNHCR data.
Figure has not yet been formally peer reviewed and is intended as exploratory.
Posted by Odd-Distribution4153
19 Comments
But I thought they were specifically coming to the UK because it is so attractive
wHy MuSLiM CoUnTRIES dOnT TaKe rEfUgEeS?
Seems like they do. Please don’t create more wars, Uncle Sam.
~1 in 1000 people in America is a refugee, and Trump managed to turn it into a major campaign issue, so now many are being deported.
It would be interesting to scale them by total population or something, because there look to be some smaller countries on there really pulling their weight.
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I like this chart. It can definitely be paired with a chart of refugees by origin country. As many (not all) of the top host countries border the origin countries, it also implicitly helps us compare various crises –for example, in Afghanistan (to Iran and Pakistan), in Venezuela (to Colombia), in Syria (to Turkey). Also Ukraine, and Rohingya from Myanmar, now in Bangladesh.
Some like Germany have people from several countries (Ukraine, Syria)
This also doesn’t include internally displaced refugees. Sudan hosts refugees mostly from South Sudan, but there are also 11-13 million (!) sudanese displaced inside the country
[https://www.unhcr.org/where-we-work/countries/sudan](https://www.unhcr.org/where-we-work/countries/sudan)
Per capita would be useful
Looking at only Germany and Canada you seem to have mixed up total claimants (I can’t find a number for Canada but it’s an easy Google search to find 3 million total for Germany) with claimants per year (Germany peaked at 800,000 in 2018, Canada peaked last year at about 140,00).
Refugees tend to not travel too far.
Most people escaping from something just move to another part of their home country and become internally displaced people.
The next largest group flee to a neighbouring country.
Only a small fraction move further, but those who do tend to keep going. They head for places that they have been told are going to be perfect.
This is why the list has so many countries you wouldn’t expect people to flee to. It is simply because they are next to places where there is currently or has recently been open conflict or similar.
It is also why Germany is so high up the list. Groups like Ukrainians saw it as the most promising destination even if it was father away.
Some of the countries in this list have taken in more refugees in a year or two back in 2015 than listed in total. I suppose gaining residence permits or something alters their status according to this list.
Absolutely shamefull seeing America that low while they are one of the main causes of refugees.
germany being top 3 while not being a neighbor to a war country is crazy
Iran doing good work I guess!, Or just porous borders
now do another one showing who’s causing the refugees
For the US this is for formally issued refugee visa recipients. It does not count the millions of asylees who have cross the border then requested asylum.
Didn’t Iran kicked out a lot of refugees after the war with Israel?
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/urgent-actions/millions-more-afghans-iran-facing-expulsion
Timescale would make these data more understandable
So this graph leaves out a lot of context. For example, the United States has over 1 million people with a pending asylum case before USCIS, with many, many more people with pending asylum cases before an immigration court. By both American and international law, people granted asylum status meet the definition of “refugee”. Because it is a formal legal process, the American asylum system is far more rigorous than, say, a counting of the people in a refugee camp in Kenya or Türkiye. Actually, for that matter, the Turkish government does not consider the millions of people counted here as having formal refugee status. So there are lots of inconsistencies with these numbers.
For context, I am a humanitarian lawyer in the US who has worked with refugees and asylum seekers.
I don’t think it’s accurate to call the majority of Russia’s 1.2m refugees. Typically refugees don’t flee to the country that invaded their homeland.
Those ethnic Russians in the annexed oblasts would be considered Russians under Russian law so wouldn’t count as refugees. And then there’s the Ukrainians who they displaced..