Latest report on the refugee and asylum situation

September 2025

This month has been overshadowed by arguments around flags.  Leaving aside the question of accommodation for asylum seekers, I wanted to provide a summary of the worldwide situation.

123 million refugees worldwide

At the end of 2024 there were estimated to be 123.2 million “refugees”, of whom 42.7 million have refugee status, 73.5 million are internally displaced within their own country and 8.4 million are seeking asylum. (4.4 million are officially stateless).  That amounts to 1 in 67 of the world’s population in flight. The largest numbers by country were from Syria (see more below) 13 million, Sudan 12 million, and Ukraine 10 million.  Interestingly, the numbers returning home during the year were 20,000 Syrians, 73,000 Ukrainians but only 3,700 Sudanese (hardly surprising).  Of 8 million Congolese in exile, only 122 returned home during the year.

On the return question, the UK’s deal to return one for one asylum seekers to France has started and the UK government is seeking a similar arrangement with Germany.  Since the aim is to reduce the backlog of pending applications, it is worth noting that the appeals backlog is currently around 70,000 (90,000 last year).  The main reason for the failure to reduce the numbers dramatically is the decline in the acceptance rate.  Whereas in 2023/4, 58% of applications were accepted in 2024/5 this was down to 48%, resulting in more appeals and more processing time.  Also the quality of the assessments has been criticised as leading to more overturning of decisions.  Among Afghan asylum seekers 96% were granted leave last year and only 40% this year (though only 8 families were actually returned in 2024/5).  This pattern is general – of 96,910 refusals between 2020 and 2024, only 24,508 people were actually returned.

New Home Secretary

With a new Home Secretary we must expect more legislation on small boats.  The number of people crossing this year is, of course, up on last year’s figure by 27%, mostly due to prolonged fine weather.

The reshuffle has meant that Home Office ministers Angela Eagle and Seema Malhotra have been moved to other departments, signalling probable change in policy under the new minister.

Section 80B of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 has been amended to take account of Brexit and the lapse of the old Dublin rules about seeking asylum in the first safe country arrived at. The rules on “inadmissibility” have been tightened to make it possible for any perceived connection to a third county grounds for deporting applicants to that (“safe”) country.

Still in the UK, the previous Home Secretary temporarily suspended applications for family reunion.  It remains to be seen if the right will be restored.

The Council of Europe has issued a report warning member countries against outsourcing application processing to third countries.

The MOD has admitted 49 data breaches in the handling of Afghan applications; this will have a very damaging effect on giving information about Afghans who served the pro-Western government to the current leadership. Following the leak, the then government set up the Afghanistan Response Route secretly to aid 7,000 Afghans to come here.  It was ended in June without any detail of its success or otherwise.

Outside of Europe the USA has now done deals to deport “illegal” immigrants to Rwanda, South Sudan, Eswatini and Uganda.  The latter country has 2 million refugees from the DRC within its borders. President Trump has suspended the US Refugee Admissions Program – President Biden set it up with a cap on the number of arrivals of 125,000.  Trump has decided on allowing 40,000 immigrants, of whom he wants 30,000 to be Afrikaners from South Africa.

…But finally, some good news.  Following the overthrow of Assad, the UNHCR report that 2 million Syrians have returned home, 600,000 of them from abroad.

AH