MOGADISHU, Feb. 7 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Friday that Somalia is hosting 41,765 registered refugees and asylum seekers as of December 2024.
The UN refugee agency said in its latest report on displacement that 64 percent of the refugees and asylum seekers are women and children.
"The majority of refugees and asylum seekers, or 65 percent, are from Ethiopia, followed by Yemen 30 percent, Syria 4 percent and other countries 1 percent," the UNHCR said in its latest update on the displacement.
According to the UNHCR, the majority of the refugees and asylum-seekers reside in urban or peri-urban settings across the Woqooyi Galbeed and Bari regions in the northern part of the country.
The UNHCR also said about 53,000 new internal displacements were monitored by the UNHCR-led Protection and Solutions Monitoring Network in December 2024.
According to the UNHCR, major drivers of displacement across Somalia include conflict and insecurity which displaced 32,123, drought that uprooted 1,864 and other reasons that displaced 18,450.
The UNHCR also said it has assisted 96,618 Somali refugees to return home since December 2014, while 44,222 arrived back spontaneously, bringing the total number of refugee returnees in Somalia to 140,840.
More than 800,000 Somali refugees and asylum seekers are also hosted in the neighboring countries, according to the UNHCR.
