More than 65 million people around the world were forced to flee their homes in 2016 due to conflict, persecutio or instability. How much do you know about global displacement?
Refugee Quiz
1. How many people were displaced around the world as of end-2016?
By the end of 2016, 65.6 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence or human rights violations. The world’s forcibly displaced population is currently at a record high.
2. Which country hosts the largest number of refugees?
Turkey hosts, by far, the largest number of refugees in the world. As of end-2016, Turkey hosted close to 2.9 million refugees, which has since risen to more than 3.5 million. By comparison, Germany hosted less than 700,000 refugees as of end-2016 and the United States hosted around 270,000.
3. Which country had the fastest growing displaced population in 2016?
While Syria continues to capture headlines, the civil war in South Sudan led to the fastest growing displaced population in 2016. This group grew by 64 per cent during the second half of 2016 from 854,000 to over 1.4 million.
4. How much of Syria’s population is currently displaced, either inside the country or having fled to across the international border to other countries?
Syria continues to have the highest percentage of its population living in displacement. More than half of the Syrian population was displaced in 2016, wither across borders or within their own country.
5. What percentage of the world’s displaced are children?
More than half of the world’s displaced are under the age of 18, even though children only make up 31 per cent of the world’s population. Half of primary-age refugee children are not in school, and only 1% of refugee youth attend university.
6. How many refugees have been living in protracted refugee situations, i.e., where a significant number of them have been in exile in a particular country for at least five consecutive years?
While more people keep getting displaced each year, some two-thirds of the world’s refugees continue to be stuck in protracted situations. 4.1 million among these are in exceptionally drawn out situations of 20 years or more, such as Palestinian refugees in Egypt and Afghans in Pakistan.
7. How many people are internally displaced within their own countries?
While refugees are the main topic of coverage in Western media, the numbers of those displaced within their own country due to violence and human rights violations are at a staggering 40.3 million.
8. Which country has the largest internally displaced population in the world?
As of end-2016, Colombia continued to have a global high of 7.4 million registered internally displaced persons, remnants of the multi-decade long civil war between the government and leftist guerrilla groups.
9. What percentage of the world’s refugees is hosted by developing countries?
Even as anti-refugee sentiments reign supreme in Europe and the United States, the greatest burden of the global refugee crisis continues to fall on low-income and middle-income countries, who host 84% of the world’s refugees. Among the top ten host nations, only one is a high-income country: Germany, at number 8 on the list.
