United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees(UNHCR)

 

The UN Refugee Agency emerged in the wake of World War II to help Europeans displaced by that conflict

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees(UNHCR) was established on December 14th, 1950 by the United Nations General Assembly with a three-year mandate to complete its work and then disband

On July 28th, 1951 the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees - the legal foundation of helping refugees and the basic statute guiding UNHCR's work - was adopted

By 1956 UNHCR was facing its first major emergency, the outpouring of refugees when Soviet forces crushed the Hungarian Revolution

In the 1960s, the decolonisation of Africa produced the first of that continent's numerous refugee crises needing UNHCR intervention

Over the following two decades, UNHCR had to help with displacement crises in Asia and Latin America.

By the end of the century there were fresh refugee problems in Africa and, turning full circle, new waves of refugees in Europe from the series of wars in the Balkans

The start of the 21st Century has seen UNHCR helping with major refugee crises in Africa, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, and Asia, especially the 30-year-old Afghan refugee problem

From only 34 staff members when UNHCR was founded, it now has 6,650 national and international members of staff, including 740 in UNHCR's Geneva headquarters. The agency works in 118 countries, with staff based in 108 main locations such as regional and branch offices and 151 often remote sub-offices and field offices

UNHCR with a three-year mandate to solve the problem of refugees celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2010, aware that these humanitarian needs are unlikely to disappear.

The budget has grown from US$300,000 in its first year to more than US$5 billion in 2014

In 2014 UNHCR deals with around 51.2 million people of concern: 33.3 million internally displaced people and 16.7 million refugees, plus another 10 million stateless people and more than 1.2 million asylum seekers

UNHCR has received the Nobel Peace Prize twice, in 1954 and 1981