What the sources establish
- UNHCR reported 117.8 million forcibly displaced people at the end of 2025.
- Its broader refugee total was 41.6 million, with nine million asylum-seekers awaiting decisions.
- Around 45 million displaced people were children.
How to read the bigger picture
Returns and changing totals do not by themselves demonstrate durable safety. Protection, services, and the conditions of return matter alongside the number of people crossing borders or leaving displacement categories.
What we should keep in view
- Displacement includes internal displacement as well as cross-border categories.
- Refugee definitions and mandates affect totals; do not add overlapping categories.
- Year-end stocks are different from annual movements.
What would change the picture?
- Assess conditions of return alongside return counts.
- Keep category definitions consistent across editions.
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