Over 68 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced in 2018, with more than half being children. Syria has the highest number of refugees, followed by Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar, and Somalia. Afghanistan previously held the record for the largest refugee population for 32 years.
In 2018, the United Nations Refugee Agency estimated that a record 68.5 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced. More than half of these refugees are children. Before the current refugee crisis caused by the Syrian Civil War, Afghanistan produced the largest refugee population in the world for 32 consecutive years, starting in the late 1970s with the Saur Revolution and the Soviet invasion. An estimated 6 million Afghans had fled their country at the height of this forced exile, mainly to neighboring Pakistan and Iran.
Where people flee violence:
Syria now tops the list of countries producing the most refugees, with 6.3 million Syrians displaced. Most have settled in neighboring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.
According to the United Nations, Afghanistan is second on the list, with 2.6 million Afghans now living as refugees, followed by South Sudan with 2.4 million refugees and Myanmar with 1.2 million refugees.
Somalia is fifth on the list, with 986,400 Somali refugees. The UN has also noted an increase in displacements from Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo due to renewed fighting there.
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