Q: Which countries host the most refugees? A: They include the world's poorest. https://t.co/SRqN232gjJ #WithRefugees pic.twitter.com/2NCD1WkwHq — UN Refugee Agency (@Refugees) March 19, 2017 Although more than a million migrants from Africa and the Middle East have entered Europe since 2015, European states are taking fewer asylum seekers than their counterparts in the Middle East and South Asia. Here's a glance at the numbers.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR), more than 21.3 million refugees fled persecution in the world as of June 2016. The UNHCR also noted that 53 percent of refugees came from just three countries: Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia.
When you look at which countries are hosting the refugees, you see that Turkey is number one, with over 2.7 million refugees within its borders. Turkey borders Syria, whose civil war has produced over 4.9 million refugees. The small Mediterranean country of Lebanon, which also borders Syria, holds over 1 million refugees and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has 664,000.
Aside from those countries in the Middle East, Pakistan has taken over 1.5 million refugees, due to the war in Afghanistan next door.
European countries
In summer 2015, large groups of refugees began coming to Germany. German Chancellor Angela Merkel implemented an open-door policy under the motto of "We can do this" to accommodate those asylum seekersn. According to the most recent statistics from Germany's Office of Migration and Refugees (BAMF), there were 476, 649 asylum applications in 2015 and 722,370 in 2016. In 2015, 137, 136 applications were granted refugee status and in 2016 that figure rose to 256,136. The BAMF office is still processing many of the applications for asylum.
The infographic above shows that in the past two years, the majority of Germany's asylum applications have come from Syrian nationals, followed by Afghans and Iraqis.
France, the EU's second largest economy, has had 85, 244 asylum requests in 2016, according to the French Ministry of the Interior. 26,351 of those requests from that year have been granted asylum.
Another popular way for migrants to reach Europe is by sea. In 2016, 355,361 migrants arrived in Greece and Italy through the Mediterranean route.
For more information from the UNHCR: http://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html
For the most recent numbers from Germany's Office of Migration and Refugees (in German): http://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/Downloads/Infothek/Statistik/Asyl/aktuelle-zahlen-zu-asyl-februar-2017.html?nn=7952222
Recent statistics on asylum applications from the French Ministry of the Interiors (in French): http://www.asylumineurope.org/sites/default/files/resources/les-demandes-d_asile-en-2016_16_janvier-2017.pdf
An up-to-date portal on how many migrants are reaching Greece and Italy by sea: http://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean
Author: Wesley Dockery