United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is an organization within the United Nations (UN) that works to solve the problems faced by refugees (people forced to flee from their country to find safety elsewhere). The UNHCR is responsible to the UN General Assembly. In recognition of its valuable work, the UNHCR received the Nobel Prize for peace in 1954 and again in 1981.
The overall task of the UNHCR is to give worldwide legal protection to refugees in accordance with the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, an international agreement adopted in 1951. This convention (diplomatic agreement) came into operation in 1954. In 1967, a protocol (addition) to the convention increased the limits of the agreement to include new groups of refugees.
The UN’s 1967 Declaration on Territorial Asylum was adopted to increase the effectiveness of international protection for refugees and asylum seekers (people seeking shelter and protection in a foreign nation). The aim of the declaration was to encourage nations to pass and enforce laws providing benefits to refugees and those asking for asylum. These benefits include the right to work, social security payments, and the right to travel.
What is a refugee?
For the purpose of its work, the UNHCR follows a strict definition of the term refugee. A refugee is any person not in the military or government who has fled his or her country because of a genuine and well-founded fear of persecution and who cannot, or does not want to, return. People may be persecuted for a variety of reasons, including gender, membership in a particular cultural or social group, nationality or citizenship, political views, or religion.
Refugees include people displaced from their home villages or towns or from their native lands by war or famine, or because they have been shut out from or exiled (sent away) by their local community. Many are forced to give up everything—home, possessions, and family and friends—to face an uncertain future in a strange land. Refugees often face sickness and mental injury and stress.
The UNHCR at work
The UNHCR has its headquarters at Geneva, Switzerland. The UNHCR is headed by a high commissioner. This official is nominated by the UN secretary general and operates with the aid of an executive committee. He or she is elected by the UN General Assembly.
The UNHCR’s work is entirely humanitarian (devoted to the welfare of human beings) and nonpolitical. It coordinates international action for refugees, establishing links with national governments, intergovernmental bodies, UN specialized agencies, and other organizations. Its main job is to resettle tens of thousands of refugees each year. During a famine or conflict, refugees may flood into neighboring regions or countries, either because they have been driven out or because they want to remove themselves from the troubled area. In either case, refugees create great difficulties for the authorities in the countries or districts into which they come. The UNHCR’s three methods for tackling such difficulties are voluntary repatriation, by which the refugees agree to return to where they came from in their native land; emigration, by which refugees go to live permanently in a country that is prepared to take them; and integration, by which they become part of the community in the countries in which they are currently living.
The long-term goal of the UNHCR is to find permanent solutions to refugee problems throughout the world. One important aim of the organization is to promote policies that will help refugees to become self-supporting. The UNHCR also encourages host nations to allow refugees living within their borders to eventually become citizens. The UNHCR provides emergency aid, rural settlement projects in Africa and Asia, housing and related assistance in Europe, and counseling, education, and training in most areas.
The UNHCR receives limited financial support from the United Nations to cover its administration costs. It gets most of its funding in the form of voluntary contributions from governments, mostly those of industrial countries with developed economies. It also receives contributions from nongovernmental organizations and individuals. Most of its money goes toward meeting the immediate needs of refugees in terms of food, shelter, and other necessities.
History
The General Assembly of the UN established the UNHCR in 1951. Its official name was the Office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. It replaced the International Refugee Organization, an agency of the UN.
Initially, the UNHCR was concerned mainly with the problems of European refugees following World War II (1939-1945) and the start of the Iron Curtain, which separated Communist countries of Eastern Europe from non-Communist countries of the West (see Cold War (The coming of the Cold War) ). But from the mid-1950’s, increasing refugee problems in Africa, Asia, and Latin America were brought to the attention of the UNHCR. From the mid-1980’s onward, the UNHCR has been actively involved with the resettlement of refugees from such places as Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, and many other countries in Africa; Iran and Iraq in the Middle East; Afghanistan in central Asia; Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), and Vietnam in southeast Asia; and Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo in Europe.
