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What is UNHCR?
Who we are, what we do, where and who we help and how.
An introduction to UNHCR
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was established by the UN General Assembly in 1950, one of several attempts by the international community during the 20th century to provide protection and assistance to refugees. The League of Nations, the forerunner of the UN, had named Norwegian scientist and explorer Fridtjof Nansen to the post of High Commissioner as early as 1921. World War II provided the impetus for several new organizations: the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, followed by the International Refugee Organization and finally by UNHCR.
The new agency was given a limited three-year mandate to help resettle 1.2 million European refugees left homeless by the global conflict. But as refugee crises mushroomed around the globe, its mandate was extended every five years. In December 2003, the UN General Assembly decided to remove the time limitation on UNHCR's mandate until the refugee problem is solved. Today, UNHCR is one of the world's principal humanitarian agencies, its staff of more than 6,500 personnel helping 20.8 million people in 116 countries. During over half a century of work, the agency has provided assistance to more than 50 million people, earning two Nobel Peace Prizes in 1954 and 1981.
UNHCR's programmes, its protection regime and other policy guidelines, are approved by an Executive Committee of 70 member states (page 21) which meets annually in Geneva. A second 'working group' or Standing Committee meets several times a year. High Commissioner António Guterres reports verbally to the Economic and Social Council on coordination aspects of the work of the agency, and submits a written report annually to the General Assembly on the overall work of UNHCR.
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UNHCR at work
Refugees are legally defined as people who are outside their countries because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group, and who cannot or do not want to return home. As a humanitarian, non-political organization, UNHCR has two basic and closely related aims – to protect refugees and to seek ways to help them restart their lives in a normal environment.
International protection is the cornerstone of the agency's work. In practice this means trying to guarantee a refugee's basic human rights and ensuring that no person will be returned involuntarily to a country where he or she has reason to fear persecution – a process known as refoulement.
UNHCR promotes international refugee agreements and monitors government compliance with international refugee law. Its staff work in a variety of locations ranging from capital cities to remote camps and border areas, attempting to provide 'protection' and to minimize the threat of violence, including sexual assault, which many refugees are subject to, even in countries of asylum.
The organization seeks long-term or so-called 'durable' solutions by helping refugees repatriate to their homeland if conditions warrant, or by helping them to integrate in their countries of asylum or to resettle in third countries.
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A changing world
UNHCR's first mandate was of limited geographical scope and time – a three-year programme to help principally European refugees uprooted by World War II. Over the following decades the problem of displaced people became both more complex and took on a global dimension. UNHCR adapted to changing circumstances. It expanded from a relatively small, specialized agency to an organization with offices in 116 countries, an annual budget of more than $1 billion, the capacity to provide not only legal protection but also material relief in major emergencies, and the ability to help increasingly diverse groups of dispossessed people.
The term refugee has a very specific definition covering only people who have fled their homeland and sought sanctuary in a second country. However, there are millions of people in similar desperate circumstances who do not legally qualify as refugees and are therefore not eligible for normal relief or protection. Increasingly, UNHCR has provided assistance to some of these groups.
Globally, there are an estimated 23.7 million so-called internally displaced persons (IDPs). These are people who have fled their homes, generally during a civil war, but have stayed in their native countries rather than seeking refugee abroad. In 2006, UNHCR was helping 6.6 million civilians from this group, particularly in the areas of protection, emergency shelter and camp management as part of an evolving effort to define more clearly the responsibilities of the various United Nations agencies and other organizations.
UNHCR also helps people who have been granted protection on a group basis or on purely humanitarian grounds, but who have not been formally recognized as refugees. In addition, the agency assists and monitors the reintegration of refugees who have returned to their own countries, civilians seeking asylum in foreign countries and several million stateless people around the world.
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Emergency relief
Protection and material help are interrelated. UNHCR can only offer effective legal protection if a person's basic needs – shelter, food, water, sanitation and medical care – are also met. The agency therefore coordinates the provision and delivery of such items and has designed specific projects for vulnerable women, children and the elderly who comprise 80 percent of a 'normal' refugee population. Makeshift tents made from UNHCR blue plastic sheeting have become immediately recognizable symbols in major emergencies ranging from the Balkans in the 1990s to the current crisis in the Sudan and Chad.
UNHCR developed and then globally integrated into its operations the concept of quick impact projects or QIPs. These projects, usually small-scale programmes to rebuild schools and clinics, repair roads, bridges and wells, are designed to span the gap between emergency assistance provided to refugees and people returning home and longer-term development aid undertaken by other agencies.
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Solving the problem
In the aftermath of World War II, UNHCR concentrated on resettling the bulk of the refugees under its mandate in new countries. But as the number of uprooted people increased dramatically worldwide, the attitudes both of countries receiving refugees and of the uprooted peoples themselves began to shift.
Many states, for instance, remain willing to help civilians fleeing conflicts, but only on a temporary basis. The great majority of today's refugees would themselves prefer to return home once the situation stabilizes.
In these circumstances, UNHCR encourages voluntary return by providing transportation, financial incentives and practical help such as seeds, farming equipment and building materials. When quick impact projects (QIPs) are approved, they are designed not only to help returning refugees, but also members of local communities which, in developing countries, are often as poor and deprived as the refugees themselves.
When it is sometimes impossible for civilians to go home, UNHCR helps them either to integrate in countries where they first sought asylum or to go to one of some 16 states which regularly accept refugees for permanent resettlement.
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Averting disaster
While UNHCR has strengthened its ability to handle major emergencies, it also devotes resources to trying to avert these crises by anticipating and preventing huge population movements from global trouble spots. One approach is to put in place a so-called early warning system – establishing an international monitoring presence to confront problems before conflict breaks out.
Such humanitarian initiatives are helpful, but governments and international political bodies must ultimately make political decisions to solve refugee and other human displacement problems. Regional initiatives are important steps in this direction and in 2001 the most important global refugee conference in half a century adopted a landmark declaration reaffirming the commitment of signatory states to the 1951 Refugee Convention. The refugee agency subsequently drew up a set of objectives called an 'Agenda for Protection' to serve as a guide to governments and humanitarian organizations in their efforts to strengthen worldwide refugee protection.
Because of the deteriorating global security situation and attempts by some governments to link terrorism with refugees and asylum seekers, the agency has re-emphasized that the 1951 Refugee Convention specifically excludes anyone involved in terrorist activities and noted that many refugees themselves were victims of such persecution.
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Partners
As humanitarian crises have become more complex, UNHCR has expanded both the number and types of organizations it works with. United Nations sister agencies include the World Food Program (WFP), which supplies food and basic commodities to refugees, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Development Program (UNDP), the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
Other organizations include the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and some 565 non-governmental organizations.
More unorthodox, and at times controversial, partners have included UN peacekeepers in the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo and Timor, various militaries which provided logistical support in Rwanda and Kosovo and financial institutions such as the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB) and the World Bank.
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Funding
UNHCR is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions, principally from governments but also from intergovernmental organizations, corporations and individuals. It receives a limited subsidy of just over three percent of its funding from the United Nations regular budget for administrative costs and accepts 'in-kind' contributions including such things as tents, medicines, trucks and air transportation.
As the number of people of concern to UNHCR jumped to a high of 27 million in 1994, its budget rose accordingly, from $634 million in 1990 to more than $1 billion annually in the 1990s and has stayed at similar levels since. UNHCR's Annual Programme Budget includes general programmes supporting ongoing, regular operations such as refugee protection and assistance, and special programmes used to cover other types of operations such as emergencies or large scale repatriation operations. UNHCR's budgets often change during the course of the year as new emergencies erupt and funding priorities shift.
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A helping hand
Every country in the world has been affected by a refugee crisis. States directly involved in war produced millions of uprooted peoples in the last century alone. Other countries, untouched by chaos themselves, provided aid and shelter to the displaced. The roles have sometimes been reversed. Europe was awash with refugees in the aftermath of two world wars, but later became a beacon of hope to other disenfranchised people.
In many cases, today's neighbour is tomorrow's refugee. They have lost their homes, jobs, community and often family. They are not a threat, but they do need temporary help until they can re-establish their lives. The great majority of people wish to return to their own homes once the situation there normalizes. But if a refugee does stay for whatever reason, he or she can often become a valuable asset to a community. A Who's Who of the world's leading business executives, artists and politicians includes many former refugees.
As the world has become smaller because of improved communications and transportation, refugee crises have moved 'closer' to unaffected countries. Some governments have reacted with alarm. In such a climate, a lot of misinformation is disseminated. To find the facts and make a difference, call your nearest voluntary agency or UNHCR office, or visit our website at www.unhcr.org.
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WHERE WE HELP
1. EUROPE
European countries received 263,000 new asylum requests in 2005, the lowest total since 1988. Images of people trying to reach Europe in rickety unseaworthy boats have added urgency to the debate over irregular migration and mixed flows of refugees and economic migrants. While recognizing that border controls are necessary, UNHCR has called for the rights of all refugees and migrants to be protected, including the right to seek asylum.
2. THE BALKANS
In the decade since the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords came into effect and the guns fell silent, around 2.5 million people across the region have returned to their homes. However, more than 600,000 people remain uprooted within the Balkans, at least one third of them ethnic Serbs from the province of Kosovo. The crisis in 1999 first of all displaced hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians and then, subsequently, many members of the Kosovo Serb minority. The political and economic conditions in the UN-administered province remain fragile.
3. THE PALESTINIAN ISSUE
There are more than 4 million Palestinian refugees worldwide, the vast majority under the care of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. More than 350,000 Palestinian refugees and asylum seekers who live outside this operational zone come under UNHCR’s mandate.
4. IRAQ
In 2005, UNHCR – working mainly from outside the country – assisted some 305,000 Iraqis who have returned home since 2003, although reintegration activities were scaled down due to the violence – which also badly affected the situation of refugees from other countries living in Iraq. As the agency leading the ‘cluster’ in charge of addressing the problems of the 1.2 million internally displaced people inside Iraq, UNHCR helped provide emergency assistance to the newly displaced. Several hundred thousand Iraqis are believed to have remained in, or moved to, neighbouring countries such as Jordan and Syria.
5. AFGHANISTAN
Since 2002 over 4.6 million Afghans have returned to their homeland including 750,000 in 2005. However, approximately 3.2 million Afghans still remain in Pakistan and Iran. Although not all Afghans in these countries are refugees, they remain the largest population of concern to UNHCR worldwide.
6. SRI LANKA
Since a 2002 Norwegian-brokered truce between the Sri Lankan government forces and the Tamil Tigers began, an estimated 406,000 internally displaced people and 18,700 refugees from India have gone back to their towns and villages. However, the accord remains fragile and an additional 325,000 civilians remain uprooted on the Indian Ocean island.
7. SUDAN / CHAD
Around 1.8 million civilians remained displaced within Sudan’s Darfur region. The situation deteriorated drastically after a major attack on an IDP camp in September 2005. Security also deteriorated in neighbouring Chad provoking displacements there – including some Chadians who fled to Darfur. Despite this, Chad continued to host more than 200,000 refugees from Darfur. In South Sudan, a January 2005 peace agreement ended a 21-year-old civil war, and paved the way for the repatriation of thousands of refugees as well as for the possible return of four million internally displaced people.
8. SOMALIA
More than 390 000 Somalis remained in long-term exile, mostly in Kenya, Yemen and Ethiopia.
9. CENTRAL AFRICA
Insecurity continued in the Central African Republic – resulting in the flight of 12,000 refugees to Chad during the second half of 2005 – and in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Tanzania continued to host a sizeable population of Burundi and Congolese refugees. However, political progress occurred in several countries, including in Burundi. In total, UNHCR facilitated the return of 90,000 refugees to their home countries in 2005, mainly to Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
10. WEST AFRICA
The general situation continued to improve, with more than 70,000 refugees and 260,000 internally displaced people returning to their homes in Liberia in 2005. Some 272,000 Sierra Leonean returnees benefited from the fourth and final year of UNHCR-led reintegration support projects. The situation remained volatile in Côte d’Ivoire in 2005, while disputed presidential elections sparked an outflow of 39,000 new refugees from Togo, mainly to Benin and Ghana.
11. SOUTHERN AFRICA
The repatriation of Angolan refugees continued during 2005. Some 53,000 refugees returned from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Namibia and Zambia, taking the total number of Angolan returnees since 2002 to 360,000.
12. COLOMBIA
As military confrontations continued in 2005, about 136,000 new internally displaced people were registered in Colombia, taking the total number to more than 2 million – one of the largest displaced populations in the world. About 500,000 Colombian civilians also live in exile in neighbouring States.
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