United States immigration agents are seizing children from parents at the southern border. Italy’s new populist coalition is forcing refugees to turn elsewhere. An anti-migrant backlash now threatens to fracture Germany’s government.

And through it all, the world’s population of displaced people keeps rising.

In a new sign of the collision between surging flows of refugees and the growing hostility in affluent host countries, the United Nations refugee agency reported Tuesday that the total number of forcibly displaced people rose by almost three million people in 2017, to 68.5 million. It was the sixth consecutive year that the figure hit a post-World War II record.

The total figure, contained in the agency’s annual global trends report, includes refugees, asylum seekers and the internally displaced — that is, people forced from their homes who have not fled their countries. Refugees accounted for most of the increase.

Ravaged by seven years of war, Syria led with the highest total of displaced people. It was followed by Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan and South Sudan.