A United Nations survey report reveled on January 12 this year, that Indian diaspora population is the largest in the world with 16 million people from India living outside their country in 2015.
The UN survey studied latest international migrant trends conducted by the UN department of economic and social affairs – DESA.
The report said that the number of international migrants — persons living in a country other than where they were born — reached 244 million in 2015 for the world as a whole, a 41 per cent increase compared to 2000.
India has the largest diaspora in the world, followed by Mexico and Russia.
In 2015, 16 million people from India were living outside of their country, a growth from 6.7 million in 1990, the survey stated.
Mexico’s diaspora population stood at 12 million.
Nearly two thirds of international migrants live in Europe (76 million) or Asia (75 million), according to the “Trends in International Migrant Stock”.
Other countries with large diasporas included Russia, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Ukraine.
Of the twenty countries with the largest number of international migrants living abroad, 11 were in Asia, 6 in Europe, and one each in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and Northern America, the survey said.
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This figure includes almost 20 million refugees. India ranked 12th out of 20 countries, hosting 5.2 million migrants in 2015. Indian diaspora makes India’s biggest number of Indian ambassadors in the world.