Independent rankings built from public data — every figure traceable to the body that published it.
Dataset · UNHCR
36 years, 1990–2025 · 177 countries
How many refugees under UNHCR's mandate were living in each country at the end of the year — recognised refugees and people in refugee-like situations, counted where they have found protection. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, compiles it from governments and its own operations, and it is the standard world count of who hosts the people who have fled their own country.
This site holds every year from 1990 to 2025, read from UNHCR’s own data and stored exactly as published.
Refugee Population by Country of Asylum · the file
0136 years
Newest first. Each opens the full table for that year, and each downloads as a CSV.
Every year in one file, one row per country per year: refugees-hosted-all-editions-nations-inquiry.csv
023 columns
Every column, what it holds, how it is stored and what its values look like — what a reader needs before opening the file.
| Column | What it holds | Stored as | Range, 2025 | Distinct | Empty | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CountrycountryName | The country’s name, as this file spells it. | Text | — | 177 | 0 | |
ISO Codecountry_codeIdentifier | The ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code, added by this site. Every table here joins on it. | Text · 3 letters | — | 177 | 0 | |
Refugees under UNHCR's mandate hosted, end of year (people)refugeesHeadline | The headline figure: Refugees under UNHCR's mandate hosted, end of year (people). | Number · whole numbers | 010 share it2,655,191 | 160 | 0 |
Profiled from the newest file. Range: the lowest and highest value, with the country holding it when only one does. Spread: countries in ten equal steps from lowest to highest. Neither end is better. The values describe a shape, not a score.
03192 countries across every year
How many countries each year holds, continent by continent, who joined and who left, and which places this site covers that the dataset never has.
| 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Africa | 49 | 49 | 50 | 50 | 50 | 50 | 50 | 51 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 51 |
| Americas | 31 | 32 | 34 | 34 | 35 | 37 | 38 | 37 | 37 | 35 | 37 | 36 |
| Asia | 45 | 45 | 43 | 43 | 43 | 43 | 43 | 43 | 43 | 43 | 43 | 43 |
| Europe | 41 | 41 | 41 | 41 | 41 | 41 | 41 | 41 | 41 | 41 | 41 | 41 |
| Oceania | 6 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 6 |
| All | 172 | 175 | 175 | 174 | 176 | 176 | 177 | 179 | 177 | 177 | 180 | 177 |
The newest 12 of 36 years.
UNHCR gives no figure for these in any year held here. It is the publisher’s choice of scope, and each place’s profile shows what is measured.
04Provenance
The path from the publisher to this page, and what was checked and changed on the way.
1 · Publisher
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency
2 · Their file
Refugee Population by Country of Asylum 2025
3 · Read by this site
September 26, 2026
4 · Stored as
36 files, one per year
5 · Used on
Its statistic page, and every profile it measures
Precision
The headline is stored in whole numbers, as published.
Rounded by this site
Never. Tables on screen may show fewer decimals; the files never do.
Changed by this site
Reshaped into one row per country: regional and income-group totals are left out, only the columns listed are kept, each row gets its ISO 3166 code, and some country names are brought to one spelling. No value is recalculated, rescaled or rounded.
Read from the UNHCR Refugee Population Statistics Database through UNHCR's own API, grouped by country of asylum, rather than from the World Bank's copy. UNHCR rounds figures below five to the nearest multiple of five to protect confidentiality. Serbia's figure includes Kosovo, as UNHCR publishes it.
05Reuse
What the publisher’s licence lets you do, what it asks of you, and a credit line and citation ready to copy.
Licence · checked September 26, 2026
Share, adapt and use commercially. Credit the publisher and say if you changed anything.
A credit line
Source: UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, Refugee Population by Country of Asylum, via Nations Inquiry.
Cite this dataset
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Refugee Population by Country of Asylum, 1990–2025 [data set]. As held by Nations Inquiry, https://nationsinquiry.com/datasets/refugees-hosted
The publisher’s own citation: UNHCR Refugee Population Statistics Database. Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Plain-language summary, not legal advice. The licence text is what binds.
06Where it is used
Where these numbers appear on this site, and the datasets nearest to it.
Charted
Refugee Population by Country of Asylum by countryWho is highest, the map, the spread, who rose and fell, and the records.
Subjects
Near neighbours
07Questions
How many refugees under UNHCR's mandate were living in each country at the end of the year — recognised refugees and people in refugee-like situations, counted where they have found protection. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, compiles it from governments and its own operations, and it is the standard world count of who hosts the people who have fled their own country.
All 36, from 1990 to 2025, each as a CSV file, or every year together in one CSV.
No, and this site does not order it either. The files hold values only.
Yes, under CC BY 4.0, with credit to UNHCR. The licence text is linked on this page.