Refugees by country of asylum

Description: 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.
Data source: UNHCR (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Unit: people
Date range: 1951-2025
Last updated: 2026-10-27
Next expected update: 2027-10-27
Managed by: Tuna Acisu

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.
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.
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.

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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, 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.

Frequently asked questions

How did Our World in Data process this 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 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.
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.
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.

Documentation from data sources

Principal data source

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.

Data sources

UNHCR – Refugee Population Statistics Database

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 whom have never been displaced. The database also reflects the different types of solutions for 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

October 27, 2026

Retrieved from

https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/download/?v2url=e7088f

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data.

Refugee Population Statistics Database, UNHCR, 2025 (https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/)

How to cite

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: Refugees by country of asylum”, part of the following publication: Fiona Spooner, Tuna Acisu, Hannah Ritchie, Simon van Teutem, Sophia Mersmann, Marwa Boukarim, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Marcel Gerber, and Max Roser (2022) - “Migration”. Data adapted from UNHCR. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261029-151812/grapher/refugee-population-by-country-or-territory-of-asylum.html [online resource] (archived on October 29, 2026).

How to cite this data

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

UNHCR (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

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]. Retrieved October 29, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261029-151812/grapher/refugee-population-by-country-or-territory-of-asylum.html (archived on October 29, 2026).

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. 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.

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