Refugees Around The World

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).

Red Crescent of the United Arab Emirates employees construct a new camp to shelter refugees who fled Libya in March 2011.

Internally displaced persons at a settlement facility in Tbilisi, Georgia, in August 2011.

Fatima, an Afghan immigrant, carries food donated by activists from a soup kitchen in a poor neighborhood in Athens, Greece.

Refugees hoping to enter Europe's Schengen Area take shelter on the outskirts of Subotica, Serbia, near the Hungarian border, in September 2011.

Afghanistan is the biggest source of refugees, with 2.7 million of its people abroad in places like Iran and Pakistan (seen here).

A UNHCR employee scans the eye of an Afghan at a refugee registration center outside Peshawar, Pakistan in June 2011.

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.

An Afghan infant is held by its mother as they wait to go back to Afghanistan from a UN-funded repatriation center in Pakistan.

Syrian refugees stroll at the Islahiye refugee camp in Gaziantep, Turkey.

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."

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.

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.

Syrian boys walk shoulder-to-shoulder in the rain at the Boynuyogun refugee camp on the Turkish-Syrian border.

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.

A camp of Syrian refugees in Dohuk, Turkey. Developing countries host four-fifths of the world's refugees, according to the UNHCR.

A young Syrian refugee flashes the "peace" sign from behind a fence at a refugee camp in Yayladagi, Turkey.

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.

A man answers questions for census takers in the village of Madzharka in the separatist Georgian region of Abkhazia in February 2011.

Afghan children at a refugee camp in Kabul on World Refugee Day 2011.

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.

A man who fled Libya waits at the border between Libya and Tunisia in March 2011.

A Syrian woman hangs laundry out to dry at the Boynuyogun Red Crescent refugee camp in the Altinozu district of Hatay, in southern Turkey.