20:01, 20-Jun-2018
World Refugee Day: Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar among largest sources of refugees
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Around a fifth of the world's refugees are Palestinian. And two-thirds of the rest come from five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia. Of these five countries, three are in Asia.
The UN says wars, persecution and other forms of violence have driven a record 6-point-5 million people from their homes. That's more than the population of Britain or France.
Syria's seven-year conflict produced the world's largest displaced population, with 12.6 million people forced from their homes. Turkey was hosting by far the largest number of refugees, with 3.5 million registered there by the end of 2017, most of them Syrians. Lebanon hosts the largest number of refugees relative to its national population, with one in four people being a refugee.
The second largest refugee-producing country in 2017 was Afghanistan, whose refugee population reached 2.6 million people.
The UNHCR says refugees from Myanmar more than doubled in 2017, reaching 1.2 million, as a crackdown forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to pour across the border into Bangladesh.