Canada moves into top 5 countries in refugee claims

Growing trend tied to new conflicts, failure to resolve long-standing crises

- NICHOLAS KEUNG

A boy carries a child at a camp for displaced people in Sudan, where more than 10 million people have been uprooted due to an ongoing conflict, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

Despite its geographic isolation from the rest of the world save for the United States, Canada was the fifth largest recipient country of asylum seekers last year.

According to the latest global trends report released Thursday by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (also known as the United Nations Refugee Agency), Canada received 146,800 new claims in 2023, up from 94,000 the year before. Only four countries were ahead: the U.S. (1.2 million), Germany (329,100), Egypt (183,100) and Spain (163,200).

It was the first time Canada made it into the top five in at least six years. It was ranked ninth in 2022 and was not even among the top 10 during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, when the country’s border was generally closed to foreign nationals.