How these numbers work
Everything on this site comes from official UNHCR statistics, published once or twice a year. Nothing here is measured in real time. This page explains what the figures include, what they leave out, and how the counter is estimated.
Where the data comes from
All figures come from the UNHCR Refugee Data Finder, through its public API. UNHCR compiles them from governments, its own registration and other partners. The globe shows the end of 2025, the most recent full year available. Country shapes come from Natural Earth.
What the routes show
Each line connects a country of origin (the country people fled) to a country of asylum (the country hosting them). The number on a route is how many people from the first country were living in the second at the end of the year, counting three groups:
- Refugees, people recognized as needing international protection.
- Asylum seekers, people whose claim has not been decided yet.
- Other people in need of international protection, a category UNHCR added in 2022, mostly Venezuelans abroad who haven't applied for asylum.
These are stocks, not movements: a route shows how many people live somewhere, not how many crossed that year. With no country selected, the globe draws the 300 largest routes. Selecting a country draws its 60 largest routes in and out.
At the end of 2025, these three groups added up to 44.6 million people worldwide.
How the counter is estimated
Nobody counts asylum applications in real time. The counter takes the number of new asylum applications UNHCR recorded in 2025, 2,796,603, and spreads it evenly across the year:
2,796,603 ÷ 31,557,600 seconds in a year ≈ one application every 11 seconds
The large number applies that pace to the time since January 1st of the current year. The smaller one applies it to the time since you opened the page. Both assume this year looks like 2025, which it won't exactly. Applications also come in waves, not one every few seconds.
“New” means first-time claims. Appeals and repeat claims are left out. Some countries report cases (a family counts once) rather than people, so the true number of people is somewhat higher. Before 2006 most countries didn't say whether a claim was new, so figures for those years may include some appeals.
What the numbers leave out
- Palestine refugees under UNRWA's mandate, about 6 million people, are counted by a different UN agency and aren't in this data.
- People displaced inside their own country. The country panel shows only those reported by UNHCR (64.2 million people worldwide). The IDMC estimate, which covers all conflict and disaster displacement, is higher.
- Unknown origins and stateless people are included in the totals but not drawn, since their routes have no starting point on the map.
- Migration in general. Most international migrants move for work, family or study. This site covers only people forced to flee.
- Undocumented and unregistered people are, by their nature, mostly missing from official statistics.
How often it changes
UNHCR publishes end-of-year figures around June and mid-year figures around October. This site checks for new data every week. Past figures are sometimes revised, so numbers for earlier years can change slightly.