Which countries host refugees?
Last Sunday, June 20th, 2021, marked the 20th anniversary of the creation of World Refugee Day, a day that was established by the United Nations in 2001 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. A new report released by UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, shows that violence and natural disasters displaced millions more in 2020, bringing the total number of displaced people worldwide to more than 80 million, of whom 26.4 million are refugees.
The latest data show that the countries that host the most refugees in absolute terms are, in this order, Turkey (3.7M), Colombia (1.7M), Pakistan (1.4M), Uganda 1.4M) and Germany 1.2M), being the main countries of origin of refugees Syria (6.7M), Venezuela (4M), Afghanistan (2.6M), South Sudan (2.2M) and Myanmar. In 2019, there were two million new asylum requests, concentrated mainly in the US (301,000), Peru (259,800), Germany (142,500), France (123,900) and Spain (118,300).
As previously shown, Syrian refugees make up the largest share of refugees worldwide, with 6.7 million Syrians currently displaced from their home country while Turkey hosts roughly half of the Syrian refugee population and the largest total of any other country, with an estimated 3.7 million refugees living in Turkey by mid-2020.
Of the top 10 refugee-hosting countries, Germany is the only one on the list that is not a developing one. In mid-2020, Germany, which is hosting the fifth largest number of refugees globally with 1.2 million predominantly Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan refugees, experienced its first decline in refugee population since 2013. In 2020, Germany recorded a decrease of 35,300 refugees, which is mainly due to having their refugee protection status revoked or withdrawn.
Clara Santamaría
