I updated my Minecraft version to 1.17.32 and after the update, I loaded my world and my villagers were still present. I then closed the world and when I loaded it for a second time, my villagers were gone. Not only the villagers that were near me but also villagers that were 8 chunks away.
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We're tracking this issue in MCPE-21416, so this ticket is being resolved and linked as a duplicate.
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