<br/>A UN report says that conflict and persecution forcibly uprooted more than 43 million people around the world last year. <br/> <br/>At the same time the number of refugees voluntarily returning to their home countries has fallen to its lowest level in the past two decades. <br/> <br/>Antonio Guterres, the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in its '2009 Global Trends' report that only 251,000 of the world's 15 million refugees returned to their home countries last year.<br/> <br/>He said major conflicts such as those in Afghanistan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which show no signs of being resolved, forced many refugees from those countries to stay put last year. The report was released on Tuesday in Berlin.<br/> <br/>The report also found that the number of people uprooted by conflict within their own country grew by four per cent to more than 27 million at the end of 2009.<br/>