GENEVA : The number of forcibly displaced people dropped for the first time in a decade last year, as more opted to return home despite often unsafe and unstable conditions, the UN said Thursday.

At the end of 2025, 117.8 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced from their homes, marking a decline of 5.4 million compared to a year earlier, the UN refugee agency said.

The agency said the number of people who had been forced to flee due to war, violence and persecution remained "unacceptably high", urging action to dramatically reduce long-term displacement over the next decade.

In its annual report, UNHCR explained that the declining displacement number was linked to "a sharp increase" in the number of refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) returning home.

In all, 14.7 million displaced people returned to their places of origin in 2025, said the report.

They included 4.4 million refugees who crossed back into their home countries, marking the second highest number of refugee returns since records began 60 years ago.

- Unsafe returns -

UN refugee chief Barham Salih told reporters in Geneva that "more than 90 percent" of refugee returns last year were concentrated in Afghanistan, Sudan and Syria.

But, he stressed, "many of these returns occurred not under conditions of safety and stability, but under pressure".

They had gone back to "countries where insecurity persists, where infrastructure has been damaged, and where basic services and economic opportunities remain scarce", he warned.

"Returns that are not safe... are not a solution," he insisted. "They risk becoming the beginning of a new displacement cycle."

Among those displaced at the end of 2025, 41.6 million were considered refugees, including nearly 5.4 million people who fled across borders to become refugees in the course of the year, Thursday's report showed.

A full 60 percent of those new refugees fled from just eight countries, including nearly a million coming from war-ravaged Sudan alone, and almost 800,000 fled from Ukraine.

The report also pointed to several crises driving mass displacement since the start of this year. They included the Mideast war launched by United States and Israel in February, which it said had forced 3.2 million people from their homes in Iran alone.

And in Lebanon, Israeli attacks since March have displaced more than one million people, the UNHCR pointed out.

The conflicts in Iran and Lebanon had spurred many refugees hosted there to return home since the start of the year, often under adverse circumstances, including to Syria and Afghanistan.

- Refugee resettlement needed -

The UN refugee agency meanwhile voiced concern over a narrowing space for refugee resettlement last year, estimating that the number of refugees needing to resettle in third countries stood at 2.9 million.

The number of resettlement spots had reached 188,800 in 2024 -- its highest level in four decades.

But last year, the number was more than halved to just 81,800, the report showed, pointing in particular to a sharp decline in the numbers accepted by the United States.

"The gap between places and needs is enormous and has been widening," the agency warned.

Salih, a former Iraqi president who was once a refugee himself, also warned that forced displacement was becoming increasingly drawn out, often lasting years and even decades.

"Today, 70 percent of refugees are living in protracted situations," he pointed out.

This was unsustainable, he insisted, calling on countries to back a new initiative aimed to lift millions out of long-term displacement and reliance on humanitarian aid.

"Humanitarian assistance was designed for emergencies. It was never intended to sustain generations of people indefinitely," he said.

The new initiative, he said, aims to slash in half the number of refugees in long-term displacement over the next decade by developing opportunities for voluntary returns, resettlement and humanitarian visas.

He voiced hope that countries would get onboard, realising that "there is a pathway to having a more sustainable situation".