Social challenges
20 Jun 2022
Immigrants
Refugees, displaced persons and migrants: what do the 100 million people fleeing their homes have in common?
For the first time in history, the number of displaced people around the world exceeds 100 million, according to the latest UNHCR data. In Ukraine alone, eight million people have fled since February. To put it into perspective, if a country were formed with all of them, it would rank as the fourteenth most populous on the planet as they are equivalent to more than 1% of the world's population. This figure includes refugees and asylum seekers, as well as the 53.2 million people displaced by conflicts within their own countries. Many of them flee with little and have to start from scratch, sometimes from an even more vulnerable situation. Their settlement and success in the country of settlement depends very much on their legal status because displaced, migrant and refugee are not synonymous.