The number of refugees worldwide fell by over 1 million in 2005 to 8.4 million--the lowest total since 1980--but the number of internally displaced people increased by roughly 1.2 million over the past year, reaching 6.6 million. These are some of the findings from the 2005 Global Refugee Trends report, released earlier this month by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the inter-governmental agency tasked with assisting refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons (IDPs), stateless people, and other displaced individuals.

According to the report, the number of refugees experienced the fifth annual consecutive decrease. This is largely due to an increase in durable solutions such as voluntary repatriation. For example, the number of Afghan refugees, which still constitutes the largest total refugee population at 1.9 million, saw a 21 percent decline during the past year as displaced individuals, primarily residing in Pakistan and Iran, repatriated.

Ongoing conflict within Iraq and Somalia has caused an increase in the number of IDPs within both countries. Some 1.2 million Iraqis and 400,000 Somalis are now considered IDPs by the UNHCR. Smaller, but noteworthy, increases have occurred in other embroiled countries such as Sudan; the number of IDPs rose from 662,000 to 842,000 in 2005. The total number of IDPs remained largest in Columbia (over 2 million people).

Afghans (2.9 million), Colombians (2.5 million), Iraqis (1.8 million), Sudanese (1.6 million), and Somalis (839,000) accounted for nearly half of the UNHCR's total population of concern.

Other important information released in this report includes a sex and age breakdown of persons of concern to the UNHCR. Data indicate that of the 5.6 million persons of concern for whom information is available, 44 percent are children under the age of 18. In Africa, the percentage of children 18 and younger is 50 percent or more.

RELATED LINKS:

To access UNHCR data, including the numbers of refugees (by origin and destination) and IDPs by country and region please consult the Earthtrends "Population, Health and Human Well-being" searchable database.

For searchable maps of the countries and regions most affected by displacement please see UNHCR's Population and Geographic Data Section.