UNHCR

UNHCR protects people forced to flee their homes because of conflict and persecution.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was created by UN General Assembly Resolution 428 (V) on 14 December 1950, in the aftermath of the Second World War, with a mandate originally intended to last only three years — long enough, it was thought, to resettle the millions of Europeans still displaced across the continent. That three-year mandate has been extended without interruption ever since.

UNHCR's legal foundation is the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, which together define who qualifies as a refugee, set out the principle of non-refoulement (the prohibition on returning people to places where their life or freedom is at risk), and describe the rights refugees are entitled to in the countries that host them. The agency supports states in applying that framework, carries out refugee status determination directly in countries where governments are unable or unwilling to do so, and maintains the global data on displaced populations that governments, donors and researchers rely on.

Operationally, UNHCR delivers emergency shelter, water, sanitation, health services and cash-based assistance in displacement settings from Cox's Bazar to eastern Chad to the Ukrainian border, and it negotiates the resettlement of people who cannot safely return home or remain in their first country of asylum. It has twice been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — in 1954 and again in 1981 — for its work with refugees.