In 2016, European Union countries, Norway and Switzerland received more than 1.2 million asylum applications, below the record 1.3 million applications received in 2015.
The number of UN peacekeeping forces around the world has peaked in recent months after falling off in the late 1990s, following a period of trial and error for UN interventions.
Although Europe is struggling to manage the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere, the countries facing the biggest refugee impacts are the ones closest to the fighting.