Forced displacement: refugees and asylum-seekers by origin and destination

Definitions and method

Zero values are not stored. In a matrix of roughly two hundred origins against two hundred asylum countries, almost every cell is zero in any given year, and storing them would add tens of millions of rows carrying no information. Rows where either end is recorded as unknown are dropped: UNHCR records them deliberately, since a person whose origin cannot be established is still displaced, but 'Unknown' is not a place and would appear in rankings as though it were.