Chapter 2 Bangladesh, which hosted the seventh-largest refugee population in the world by the end of 2017. The number of refugees increased more than three-fold, from 276,200 at the beginning of the year to 932,200 at year-end. The refugee population in Sudan more than doubled in 2017, reaching 906,600 at the end of the year. The total number of South Sudanese refugees hosted by Sudan at year-end stood at 772,700, with a sizable population of Eritrean refugees (108,200) also present in the country. The refugee population in Ethiopia grew by 12 per cent in 2017, reaching 889,400 by year-end. The majority of new arrivals were from South Sudan. By the end of the year, Ethiopia provided protection to refugees from South Sudan (421,400), Somalia (253,800), Eritrea (164,600), and Sudan (43,900). Ethiopia ranked nineth among refugee-hosting countries worldwide. Jordan experienced a small increase in its refugee population (1 per cent), mainly due to births, and provided protection to 691,000 refugees at the end of 2017. The vast majority of these refugees were from Syria (653,000), with most having arrived between 2012 and 2015, while an additional 34,000 refugees originated from Iraq. Jordan had the 10th-largest refugee population in the world. Altogether, the 10 largest countries by refugee population combined – which include four of the world’s least developed countries (Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh) 21 – hosted over 12.5 million refugees at the end of 2017. This is about 63 per cent of all the refugees under UNHCR’s mandate. New Refugees About 2.7 million people were newly registered as refugees during 2017, double the amount from 2016 and close to the record number of new refugee arrivals registered in 2014. This figure is based on 18 the 1,320,700 refugees who were recognized on a group or prima facie basis, as well as the 1,410,800 who were granted some temporary form of protection. Most of these refugees fled to neighbouring countries or elsewhere in their immediate region [Figure 5]. An additional 731,600 people were granted refugee status following an individual refugee status determination procedure during the reporting period [see Chapter 5]. The difficult situation in South Sudan, where armed conflict, disease, and malnutrition continued to take a huge toll on the population, was the main cause of refugee displacement in 2017, with over 1 million new refugees fleeing the country, mainly remaining in the region. Those forced to leave South Sudan were granted protection on a group or prima facie basis in the bordering countries of Sudan (475,500), Uganda (406,100), Ethiopia (75,400), the DRC (22,100), and Kenya (21,000). The conflict in Syria continued to force people to flee the country, with 745,200 Syrians newly registered in Turkey (681,000), Egypt (21,000), Lebanon (14,600), Greece (12,400) and Jordan (10,800). 22 The third-largest group of new refugees originated from Myanmar, where mainly due to the outbreak of violence in Rakhine State at the end of August 2017, 655,500 Rohingya people were forced to cross the border into Bangladesh, where they were granted protection. The majority of the other new displacements were due to armed conflict and human rights abuses in central and eastern Africa – most notably in the Central African Republic, the DRC, Burundi, Eritrea, Sudan, Nigeria, Mali, and Somalia. The civil war in the Central African Republic displaced some 110,500 new refugees in the region, particularly the DRC 21 See: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/ for definition of least developed counties. 22 In some cases there is a significant delay between arrival and registration. unhcr > Global trends 2017