“The willingness of nations to work together not just for refugees but for the collective human interest is what’s being tested today, and it’s this spirit of unity that badly needs to prevail.” Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Population of Concern to UNHCR By the end of 2015, the total population of concern to UNHCR stood at 63.9 million people. This includes people who have been forcibly displaced (refugees, asylum-seekers, and internally displaced persons) and those who have found a durable solution (returnees), as well as stateless persons, most of whom have never been forcibly displaced. This categorization therefore does not coincide with the 65.3 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, a figure that includes refugees and other displaced people not covered by UNHCR’s mandate and excludes other categories such as returnees and stateless persons. A detailed breakdown of UNHCR’s population of concern by category and country is provided in Annex Table 1. present in Yemen at the end of 2015, 95 per cent originating from Somalia. Further complicating the humanitarian situation was the fact that more than half of the Yemini population was under the age of 19; thus, a high proportion of the displaced population were children. Globally at the end of 2015, about half of refugees were children, requiring focused efforts to address their needs and minimize the impact of forced displacement upon them. The total number of unaccompanied or separated children who applied for asylum worldwide increased almost threefold to 98,400 during 2015, compared to 34,300 in 2014. This was the first time that UNHCR recorded such a large number of these claims within a single year since the agency started systematically collecting this information in 2006. Providing durable solutions to forcibly displaced people remains a challenge, and only a small 08 UNHCR Global Trends 2015 proportion of the overall population found a solution in 2015. Some 201,400 refugees were able to return home voluntarily in 2015, the majority to Afghanistan, Sudan, and Somalia. This is a very small proportion of the overall refugee population, but it represents an increase compared to last year when only 126,800 refugee returns were reported. Resettlement arrivals reported by governments increased marginally from 105,200 in 2014 to 107,100 in 2015. According to UNHCR’s definition, nearly 6.7 million refugees were considered to be in a protracted displacement situation9 at the end of 2015, some 300,000 more than the previous year. This report analyses statistical trends and changes of global displacement from January to December 2015 for the populations for whom UNHCR has been entrusted with a responsibility by the international community. These populations include refugees, asylum-seekers, returnees, stateless persons, and certain groups of internally displaced persons, collectively referred to as ‘persons of concern’.10 The data presented are based on information available as of 18 May 2016 unless otherwise indicated. The figures in this report are based on data reported by governments, non-governmental organizations, and UNHCR. The numbers are rounded to the closest hundred or thousand. As some adjustments may appear in the 2015 Statistical Yearbook to be released late this year, the figures contained in this report should be considered as provisional and subject to change. Unless otherwise specified, the report does not refer to events occurring after 31 December 2015. ● 9 Defined as a situation in which 25,000 or more refugees of the same nationality have been in exile for five years or longer in a given asylum country. 10 See p. 54 for a definition of each population group.