Africa-Press – Botswana. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says Africa is confronted with a record high forced displacement, hosting roughly one-third of the world’s forcibly displaced people.
Speaking at a relevant conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital during the weekend, Lisa Fergusson, senior liaison advisor to the UNHCR, said out of the 117 million people who are forcibly displaced worldwide, about 41 million refugees and asylum seekers as well as 30 million internally displaced live in Africa.
“Africa also hosts the single largest displacement site in the world, Sudan, where 13.4 million people remain displaced,” she said.
She said since 2012, the deteriorating security situation in the Sahel has led to the forced displacement of more than 4 million people in West and Central Africa, including large-scale internal displacement and refugee movements to neighbouring countries.
While these flows were initially limited to the sub-region, the deterioration of the security and humanitarian situation in Burkina Faso has generated refugee movements towards neighbouring countries such as Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo since 2021.
According to the UNHCR’s advisor, by the end of October 2025, there were over 170,000 refugee arrivals in the four countries, in addition to the internal displacement of some 19,000 people caused by a spillover of the security crisis reported in Benin and Togo, with increased risks to civilians.
She noted that the effects of insecurity are also spreading to the Lake Chad Basin region and North Africa, with an increase in forced displacement.
“In this complex environment, the concerned States are facing unprecedented challenges to securing their national territory while maintaining their tradition of asylum and reception of refugees,” Fergusson said.
The UNHCR’s advisor cautioned that displacement when left unaddressed, can become a driver of future instability, stretching limited resources of host communities and exacerbating tensions over land and essential services.
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