By November 2021, more than 84 million people had been forced from their homes, according to data from the UNHCR, the refugee agency of the United Nations. This figure is an increase from 2020 and 2019, both of which were record-breaking years in terms of the numbers forcibly displaced around the world.

This rise was coupled with a drop in global mobility overall due to stricter travel rules, prompting the Director General of the UN migration agency, António Vitorino, to declare that the world was “witnessing a paradox not seen before in human history.”

“While billions of people have been effectively grounded by COVID-19, tens of millions of others have been displaced within their own countries,” he said, at the launch of the agency’s latest World Migration Report.