Refugees and asylum-seekers have been forced to flee their homes due to conflict and violence and have sought safety in another country. The places where refugees and asylum-seekers live depend on many different factors, with most refugees and asylum-seekers wishing to remain close to their home countries.

UNHCR compiles granular sub-national data on the locations of forcibly displaced people, together with age- and sex- disaggregation.¹ Data on the geographical distribution of forcibly displaced people underpins efforts by governments, the UN and partners to plan more effective and localised humanitarian responses. However, sub-national data availability is improving but remains incomplete. In 2001, sub-national data was only published for around 10 per cent of the people that UNHCR protects and/or assists.² By 2024 this had increased to 77 per cent.

Using UNHCR’s sub-national data, the trends in population figures for some of the largest locations hosting refugees and asylum-seekers are presented below. This includes refugees under UNHCR’s mandate, people in a refugee-like situation, asylum-seekers and other people in need of international protection. All further references to refugees and asylum-seekers include all four of these population groups.

UNHCR’s settlement typology defines four types of settlements, which also include camps. These are formal settlements, informal settlements, collective centres and transit centres. The typology also includes forcibly displaced people that are living outside settlements, in individual accommodation.³ Reporting on individual accommodation tends to be at administrative level one within States. By contrast, reporting of settlements tends to be for specific locations. This is not always the case - in some countries, multiple small settlements have been aggregated and reported at administrative level one, while in others more granular reporting of forcibly displaced people hosted in individual accommodation is available.

It remains challenging to produce a definitive estimate of how many refugees and asylum-seekers live in settlements, due to limited reporting. Nevertheless, UNHCR estimates that approximately 8.7 million (19 per cent) refugees and asylum-seekers live in settlements. However, for 13.2 million (29 per cent) refugees and asylum-seekers, the reported type of accommodation is unknown. UNHCR makes a strong assumption that where the accommodation type is unknown, it is much less likely that the refugees and asylum-seekers are in settlements, which typically have centralised, managed services.

In this section, the types of accommodation are reclassified for simplicity into settlements and individual accommodation. Settlements includes all four types of settlement (formal settlements, informal settlements, collective centres and transit centres). The individual accommodation includes also those for whom the data is not available, that is, unknown type of accommodation.

Figure 1 below shows the largest places around the world hosting refugees and asylum-seekers over the last decade based on data reported to UNHCR. The changes reflect the evolution of the major refugee situations around the world at the sub-national level. The locations presented show the number of refugees and asylum-seekers hosted within each settlement (point level data) and aggregated individual accommodation statistics at administrative level 1.

The bar colours in the figure denote settlements and individual accommodation. Note that end-year figures have been interpolated to show approximate changes during each year.

The largest places shown above include the following:

The information shown here is based on the data published on the Refugee Data Finder. The reported sub-national data remains unavailable or incomplete for several countries hosting a large number of refugees, asylum-seekers or other people in need of international protection, including Colombia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Pakistan, Türkiye, the United States of America and several European countries. For some of these countries, data is only available at administrative level one, or only at national level. For others, additional data sources help provide granular estimates and these have not been included in this analysis to date.

For Türkiye, sub-national data is reported separately from the age- and sex- disaggregated data by the government.⁷ Within the Refugee Data Finder, the age- and sex- disaggregated data has been prioritised.

If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions about UNHCR's published sub-national data, please do let us know using the feedback link at the bottom of the home page. We will reply!