The Refugee Flow

"Some 43.3 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide at the end of 2009, the highest number of people uprooted by conflict and persecution since the mid-1990s, according to UNHCR's annual 2009 Global Trends report, released today. At the same time, the number of refugees voluntarily returning to their home countries has fallen to its lowest level in twenty years." Read the full article from The UN Refugee Agency.

View a larger version of the infographic here! 

"Simply put, as conflicts rumble on, those who fled the initial fighting cannot safely return until the gunfire falls silent.

The key drivers of these trends are continuing conflicts in countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia and the Congo, Democratic Republic of and as-yet-unresolved situations in places such as Iraq and Sudan. Colombia's 3.3 million internally-displaced persons is the highest in the world, with African nations accounting for 40% of the world's internally-displaced population.

Most interesting, perhaps, is the rubbishing of so-called conventional wisdom with regards to refugee relocation. Forget our over-burdened immigration system; four out of every five refugees are housed in the developing world, with Europe only accounting for the resettlement of 16% of the global population.
So who takes the most refugees? Pakistan leads the way, with 1.7 million, and Iran and Syria, at just over 1 million each, make up the podium. The US and the UK? They barely make the Top 10."