As the world marks World Refugee Day, the latest figures from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) paint a sobering picture of a crisis that continues to deepen despite decades of international humanitarian efforts.

By the end of 2025, a total of 129.4 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced or stateless, according to UNHCR. This includes 41.6 million refugees, 9 million asylum seekers and 68.7 million internally displaced persons, meaning one in every 70 people globally has been forced to flee their homes. Nearly 45 million of them, or 3%, are children under the age of 18.

At the same time, humanitarian resources are under increasing strain. UNHCR expenditure fell to $3.83 billion in 2025, down 22% from the previous year, highlighting widening funding gaps even as displacement continues to rise.

The contrast raises an increasingly urgent question: why are record numbers of people still being displaced even as the international humanitarian system has become more sophisticated?

A growing crisis beyond humanitarian relief

Over the past several decades, the international community has steadily expanded its capacity to respond to refugee emergencies. Relief networks have grown, logistics have improved and multilateral mechanisms have become more established.

Yet displacement has continued to rise year after year.

In Gaza, an estimated 1.9 million Palestinians are displaced and confined to overcrowded tent camps. Current international efforts have largely focused on delivering food, medicine and emergency supplies to civilians. However, negotiations towards a lasting ceasefire and political settlement have repeatedly stalled, leaving humanitarian agencies to respond to growing needs while the conflict remains unresolved.

A similar pattern has emerged in Sudan, now regarded by the United Nations as one of the world's largest humanitarian crises. More than 11.5 million people have been displaced since 2023, yet the conflict has attracted far less sustained international attention than other geopolitical flashpoints.

Elsewhere, protracted conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Sahel region and Somalia continue to generate new waves of displacement as armed conflict, violent extremism, escalating disease outbreaks and food insecurity reinforce one another.

Cui Zheng, a professor at Liaoning University, told CGTN that this trend reflects a fundamental shift in the nature of the refugee crisis. He said the issue is no longer simply a humanitarian challenge, but a concentrated manifestation of imbalances in global governance.

While wars, poverty, climate change and food shortages remain the immediate drivers of displacement, Cui argued that deeper structural deficits in peace, development, security and governance are preventing the international community from breaking the cycle.

"In many conflict-affected regions, it is difficult to sustain long-term ceasefires, reconstruction is slow and development remains constrained," Cui said. "Even when refugees return home, they still face insecurity, limited job opportunities and damaged infrastructure."

He added that today's displacement crises show that humanitarian aid alone cannot resolve the problem and that the persistence of global displacement exposes weaknesses in the current international refugee governance framework.

"The international community often focuses on helping refugees after they have fled," Cui said. "But it pays insufficient attention to creating conditions that allow people to remain safely in their homes or return with dignity."

From managing refugees to reducing displacement

Experts argue that addressing the crisis requires not only improving humanitarian assistance but also preventing displacement from occurring in the first place.

On Friday, China's Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Sun Lei, highlighted two key challenges in global humanitarian efforts: a widening funding shortfall that weakens the capacity of the United Nations and the fact that underdevelopment remains a root cause of humanitarian crises.

He called on donor countries to honor their financial commitments and increase contributions, while urging the United Nations to allocate resources more fairly. He also emphasized the need for better coordination between humanitarian and development assistance in order to strengthen the long-term resilience of countries facing crises.

For Cui, refugee governance should evolve toward a more comprehensive framework covering conflict prevention, humanitarian assistance, post-conflict reconstruction and sustainable development. He said China's four global initiatives offer "a systematic approach that addresses both the symptoms and root causes" of displacement.

Between 2021 and 2025, China proposed the Global Development Initiative (GDI), the Global Security Initiative (GSI), the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) and the Global Governance Initiative (GGI). The GDI focuses on poverty reduction, food security, infrastructure development and job creation. The GSI advocates resolving disputes through dialogue and consultation rather than confrontation. The GCI promotes mutual respect among civilizations and cultural dialogue, while the GGI calls for multilateralism, sovereign equality and international cooperation.

Cui said the GDI can help reduce displacement caused by economic hardship and uneven development; the GSI seeks to address armed conflict – the largest source of refugee flows – at its origin; the GCI can help reduce xenophobia, discrimination and social exclusion faced by refugees in host societies; and the GGI encourages more balanced responsibility-sharing among countries.

"The essence of addressing the refugee issue lies in reducing displacement at its root, shifting from crisis response to root-cause governance," Cui said, adding that this requires building a more just and equitable global governance system.

As the world marks World Refugee Day, the scale of global displacement suggests that humanitarian response alone is no longer sufficient. Beyond emergency relief, the deeper test for the international community may be whether it can build a system capable of reducing the very forces that drive people from their homes. The question now is not only how to help those who have fled, but whether the world can prevent the next wave from forming.