United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Definition/short description

The IGO, UNHCR describes itself as follows[1]. The agency is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolverefugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country.The UNHCR is an agency of the United Nations (UN).

In depth

Thesedays the UNHCR main focus is taking care of up to 32.9 million uprooted people all over the world. The organizations tries to accomplish this in various ways.The most important tools the UNHCR uses is the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention. This convention ensures basic human rights of vulnerable people( history shows us that refugees most of the time are/become vulnerable people).The convention also protects refugees from being prosecuted to a country involuntarily and where they can face persecution. Other functions of the UNHCR are, Helping refugees returning to their own countries. Here they help the people finding out what to do when they get back to their native countries and helping them getting back to their countries. If returning to the peoples native countries isn't possible the UNHCR also helps the people integrate in their new countries of asylum. If people become citizen of a third world country UNHCR also helps to settle in this new country. Another big target for the UNHCR is helping people in the aftermath of an immediate refugee exodus. The UNHCR tries to provide the refugees with shelter, food, water and medical care. To provide all of this the UNHCR ofcourse nee funds(money). The UNHCR therefore has a wide ranged variety of donors. These donors vary a lot. Govermental organisations, non-governmental, private sector, refugee communities and civil society.

The relevance of the UNHCR for Migration and/or Migration Policy

We can say that the UNHCR is where it is nowadays because of migration. Stronger, the UNHCR excist because of migration. As said before the main aim of the UNHCR is to take care of about 32 million uprooted people in more than 110 countries. Those people are in trouble because they had to migrate. If there wasn't any migration there also wouldn't be any refugees and therefore a organisation like UNHCR wouldn't be necessary. The UNHCR has a big influence in migration flows. The UNHCR effects migration (flows) by a number of actions. The UNHCR helps refugees returning to their countries. This way they try to prevent a migration flow. At the other hand they also try to help refugees seek asylum and integrate in their new countries. This way they participate in a migration flow.

Examples

Example: World refugee day The UNHCR not only tries to help refugees directly. They are also aware of the fact that attention for refugees is really important. The UNHCR needs his sponsors and gifts to function. Therefore it's necessary that the people are aware of the work the UNHCR is doing. That's why they started World Refugee day which takes place the 20th of june every year.

Description

Example: The UNHCR active in Darfur One of the biggest projects the UNHCR is dealing with nowadays is the project in Darfur (Sudan). Darfur has been a crisis region for a long time now and a lot of people became refugees. The UNHCR tries to take care of all those refugees. What they exactly do (did) we can read in the following link. This document considers the year 2007 mostly.

Sources, further reading, links

• Official site of the UNHCR
• Amnesty International
• Article about the results of the UNHCR
• Youtube UNHCR channel
• Gil Loescher, The UNHCR and World Politics — A Perilous Path, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001
• N.Steiner, Problems of Protection: The UNHCR, Refugees, and Human Rights

Related Educational Pages

• IPMProject1
• Migration