By the end of 2022, the number of refugees globally stood at 35.3 million, an increase of more than eight million from the year before, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
More than half (52 percent) of all refugees came from just three countries: Syria (6.5 million), Ukraine (5.7 million) and Afghanistan (5.7 million).
Under international law, refugees are people who are forced to flee their home countries to escape persecution or a serious threat to their life, physical integrity or freedom.
To raise awareness about the situation of refugees worldwide, the UN designated June 20 each year as World Refugee Day.
Visualising 70 years of refugee journeys
In 1951, the UN established the Refugee Convention to protect the rights of refugees in Europe in the aftermath of World War II. In 1967, the convention was expanded to address displacement across the rest of the world.
The number of refugees has more than doubled over the past decade from 15 million in 2011.
The infographic below highlights more than 70 years of refugee journeys by country of origin from 1951 to 2022.
When the Refugee Convention was born, there were 2.1 million refugees. The plight of Palestinians has been the longest ongoing displacement. From 1947 to 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians were expelled by Zionist forces, an event Palestinians call the Nakba, which means “catastrophe”.
“When I was young, I was one of the people who ran to the site of the Nakba, and the site was chilling,” Khalil Sarsour, a Palestinian refugee, told Al Jazeera.
“Perhaps I will return to Jaffa or to our homes in Lydd, perhaps my grandchildren or my children, but we will definitely return, but when and how, only God knows that.”
By 1980, the number of refugees recorded by the UN surpassed 10 million for the first time. Wars in Afghanistan and Ethiopia during the 1980s caused the number of refugees to double to 20 million by 1990.
The number of refugees remained fairly consistent over the next two decades.
However, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, together with the civil wars in South Sudan and Syria, resulted in refugee numbers exceeding 30 million by the end of 2021.
One-third of Ukrainians displaced
The war in Ukraine, led to the fastest growing refugee crisis since World War II with 5.7 million people forced to flee Ukraine in less than a year. It took Syria four years to reach the same level of displacement.
An additional six million are internally displaced within Ukraine.
Kateryna Miakutikova, 34, from Kyiv fled to Poland days after the war began. She now lives in west London, where she regularly visits the Ukrainian Social Club with her two children.
“You go because you need to go somewhere. In Lviv, I heard my first siren, and I didn’t know what to do.”
One year on from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Al Jazeera spoke to five Ukrainians who fled the war. You can read their stories and what they took with them when they escaped here.
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