Epilogue: Advancing Demographic Analysis of Refugee and Forced Migration

Abstract

Taking the years 2011–2016 to frame the initiatives of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) concerning the demography of refugees and forced migration and the preparation of this volume, the world’s population of forcibly displaced persons has nearly doubled, from 35.4 million to 67.8 million persons of concern to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR 2012, 2017a, b); the number of persons identified by the UNHCR as refugees has increased by over two thirds, from 9.8 to 16.3 million and the number of internally displaced persons has increased from 15.5 to 36.6 million, 137% over this half a decade. Increases in the world’s refugee population have been witnessed at the largest relative scale in Europe, increasing from 1.6 to 5.2 million, and in Africa (excluding northern Africa), from 2.7 to 5.1 million. The most dramatic increases in persons displaced within their own countries has been witnessed within states in the Middle East and North Africa, from 1.8 million at the end of 2011 to 12.2 million at the end of 2016. With these changes comes shifts in the regional distribution of the global population of concern: in 2011, 16% of the world's refugees were hosted in Europe; in 2016 this share had increased to 31%, relative parity with the proportion hosted by the total of countries in southern Africa. While the number of IDPs in southern Africa has increased from 6.9 to 11.2 million, the region’s share of displaced persons worldwide decreased from 44% in 2011 to 31% in 2016, reflecting the large-scale flight of persons within countries in the Middle East, notably Syria; a third of the world’s internally displaced population remains within countries within the Middle East and North Africa at the end of 2016 (UNHCR 2012, 2017a).