The UN refugee agency issued a fresh report ahead of World Refugee Day on June 20. In it, the UNHCR said 2011 produced the most new refugees since 2000, although a near-record number of displaced people also returned to their homes during the same period.
Refugees Around The World
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The UNHCR says that 42.5 million people ended 2011 either as refugees (15.2 million), internally dispaced (26.4 million), or seeking asylum (895,000).
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Red Crescent of the United Arab Emirates employees construct a new camp to shelter refugees who fled Libya in March 2011.
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Internally displaced persons at a settlement facility in Tbilisi, Georgia, in August 2011.
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Fatima, an Afghan immigrant, carries food donated by activists from a soup kitchen in a poor neighborhood in Athens, Greece.
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Refugees hoping to enter Europe's Schengen Area take shelter on the outskirts of Subotica, Serbia, near the Hungarian border, in September 2011.
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Afghanistan is the biggest source of refugees, with 2.7 million of its people abroad in places like Iran and Pakistan (seen here).
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A UNHCR employee scans the eye of an Afghan at a refugee registration center outside Peshawar, Pakistan in June 2011.
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A near-record 3.2 million people returned to their homes in 2011, the UN says. This Afghan woman, seen at a registration center in Herat, was repatriated from Iran.
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An Afghan infant is held by its mother as they wait to go back to Afghanistan from a UN-funded repatriation center in Pakistan.
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Syrian refugees stroll at the Islahiye refugee camp in Gaziantep, Turkey.
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The UNHCR warns in its new "Global Trends Report" that "a person who becomes a refugee is likely to remain as one for many years -- often stuck in a camp or living precariously in an urban location."
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A refugee at the entrance of her home in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Of the 10.4 million refugees for which the UNHCR is responsible, more than 7 million have been refugees for more than five years.
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Refugee boys from Myanmar look for items to salvage from the ruins of a burned mosque in the Um-Piam refugee camp after fire engulfed part of it near Mae Sot in February 2012.
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Syrian boys walk shoulder-to-shoulder in the rain at the Boynuyogun refugee camp on the Turkish-Syrian border.
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Afghan women and children at a UNHCR registration center in Pakistan. Nearly 26 million displaced people were receiving protection or assistance from the UN's refugee agency by the end of 2011.
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A camp of Syrian refugees in Dohuk, Turkey. Developing countries host four-fifths of the world's refugees, according to the UNHCR.
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A young Syrian refugee flashes the "peace" sign from behind a fence at a refugee camp in Yayladagi, Turkey.
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Refugees who were recently deported from Iran stand near temporary shelters in Herat, western Afghanistan, in November 2011. The UNHCR says there are Afghan refugees in 79 countries.
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A man answers questions for census takers in the village of Madzharka in the separatist Georgian region of Abkhazia in February 2011.
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Afghan children at a refugee camp in Kabul on World Refugee Day 2011.
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Egyptian refugees fleeing violence in Libya line up to be processed at a refugee camp after crossing into Tunisia near the border crossing of Ras Jdir in February 2011.
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A man who fled Libya waits at the border between Libya and Tunisia in March 2011.
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A Syrian woman hangs laundry out to dry at the Boynuyogun Red Crescent refugee camp in the Altinozu district of Hatay, in southern Turkey.