Facts & Figures: Syria refugee crisis & international resettlement

Refugees in the region 3.8 million refugees from Syria (95 per cent) are in just five countries Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt:

  • Lebanon hosts 1.1 million refugees registered with UNHCR, which amounts to around 26 per cent of the country’s population 
  • Jordan hosts 618,615 registered refugees, which amounts to 9.8 per cent of the population
  • Turkey hosts 1.6 million refugees, which amounts to 2.4 per cent of the population
  • Iraq hosts 225,373 registered refugees, which amounts to 0.67 per cent of the population
  • Egypt 142,543 registered refugees, which amounts to 0.17 per cent of the population

Conflict in Syria Around 190,000 people have been killed and 10.8 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria

More than 10 million Syrians, or 45 per cent of the country’s population has been displaced

Of those, 6.5 million are displaced within Syria and approximately 4 million have sought refuge in other countries.

International Resettlement

In total, 63,170 resettlement places have been offered globally since the start of the Syria crisis, which equates to a mere 1.7 per cent of the total population of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and Turkey.

378,684 people in the five main host countries – or 10 per cent- are in need of resettlement according to UNHCR.

Amnesty International is calling for at least five per cent of refugees to be resettled from the main host countries by the end of 2015, and a further five percent by the end of 2016 (this amounts to 380,0000 people).

Key facts:

  • The six Gulf countries – Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain – have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees.
  • Other high income countries including Russia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea have also offered zero resettlement places.
  • The number of Syrian refugees hosted by Turkey alone, is more than 10 times the number of new Syrian asylum applications received in all 28 EU countries in the past three years.
  • Germany has pledged 30,000 places for Syrian refugees through its humanitarian admission programme; nearly half the global total of resettlement and humanitarian admission programme places for Syrian refugees and 82 per cent of the EU total.Germany and Sweden together have received 96,500 new Syrian asylum applications in the last three years, representing 64 per cent of all such applications in the EU.Excluding Germany and Sweden, the remaining 26 EU countries have pledged a mere 5,105 resettlement places, or 0.13 per cent of Syrian refugees in the main host countries.