00:00Are 85% of the world's refugees really Muslim?
00:06A politician from the far-right Portuguese Chega Party, which is known for espousing anti-migrant views,
00:12alleged online that 85% of refugees are Muslim.
00:16He also claimed that instead of seeking asylum in other Muslim countries, they choose to flee to the West.
00:22Now, according to the UN's Refugee Agency, the global refugee population,
00:26including people in need of international protection, reached nearly 42.7 million in 2024.
00:32However, it is difficult to access precise and up-to-date breakdowns of refugees' religions.
00:37This is due to wars, economic crises and natural disasters, impacting the makeup of the global refugee population.
00:44Within Europe, Germany was the European country which hosted the most refugees in 2024.
00:50Government research from 2021 revealed that over a six-year span, 69.7% of refugees in Germany were Muslim.
00:58But these figures predate Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
01:01Now, the latest data from the UN's Refugee Agency revealed that nearly 7 out of 10 of all refugees and people in need of international protection
01:09came from these five countries in 2024.
01:12Although a country may have a majority Muslim population, this does not mean that all refugees who originate from there are Muslim.
01:18The main religion in Syria, Afghanistan and South Sudan is Islam.
01:23However, Ukrainians and Venezuelans alone made up nearly one-third of all refugees and other people in need of international protection.
01:30These two countries are predominantly Christian.
01:33A UN spokesperson told Euronews that this made it unlikely that 85% of refugees are Muslim.
01:39Contrary to the claim that refugees predominantly seek refuge in the West,
01:43Germany is the only European country which features among the top seven host countries.
01:49Iran and Turkey are the top countries where refugees have sought asylum,
01:53while four out of the seven have a predominantly Muslim population.
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