The number of refugees worldwide has fallen to 9.7 million, the lowest level in at least a decade, thanks to increased international efforts to help uprooted people, the UN refugee agency said on Thursday.
"The statistics are very encouraging," said Ruud Lubbers, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
"Nearly 5 million people ... over the past few years have been able to either go home or to find a new place to rebuild their lives. For them, these dry statistics reflect a special reality; the end of long years in exile and the start of a new life with renewed hope for the future."
UNHCR said the latest figure for refugees -- compiled for the end of 2003 -- was down 920,000 from the previous year. Refugee numbers were down in all of the five world regions covered by UNHCR.
The sharp reduction was also due to "ongoing work by UNHCR and its partners to resolve protracted refugee situations that have gone on for years or even decades," the agency said.
UNHCR defines refugees as people who have fled across a national border, but it also tries to help others who have been forced from their homes, lumping them all together as "the population of concern."
The agency's total number at the end of 2003 was 17.1 million, compared with 20.8 million the previous year. That figure includes people away from their homes as well as those recently returned.
One of the main reasons for the drop in refugees was the continued return to Afghanistan.
More than half of the 1.1 million refugees repatriated last year returned to Afghanistan. Large numbers of refugees also returned home to Angola, Burundi and Iraq.
"The phenomenal return of Afghans to their homeland over the past few years underscores the benefits of sustained international attention and support for the work of UNHCR and its partners in regions of origin," Lubbers said. "The impact is felt as far away as Europe, where the numbers of Afghan asylum seekers have plunged."
Estimates of Afghan refugees will be subject to revision this year, as figures do not include refugees living in urban areas in Pakistan. The number of Afghans in Iran is also thought to be higher than previously estimated.
There has been an unprecedented level of voluntary repatriation in the last two years as around 3.5 million have returned home, most of them Afghans from Pakistan.
But countries accepting returning refugees still need international support and investment, Lubbers warned.
"Then we know refugees can go home and stay home, ensuring the sustainability of their return."
In some countries, such as Iraq and Liberia, people are going home even though UNHCR is not promoting voluntary return.
Afghans remain the largest single nationality seeking asylum, with 2.1 million looking for refuge in 74 countries, followed by Sudanese and Burundis.
Pakistan tops the list of countries for asylum, with 1.1 million seeking refuge there. Next on the list are Iran, Germany, Tanzania and the US, which has 452,500 asylum seekers.
Not all the news is good, however. Six countries -- Sudan, Liberia, Central African Republic, Congo, Ivory Coast and Somalia -- each produced more than 15,000 refugees in 2003. Some 807,000 claims for asylum or refugee status were submitted in 141 different countries.
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