What's the best bit of the UN? No 1: the UNHCR
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Version 0 of 1. In the current furore over migration into Europe, it’s an often forgotten irony that the UN refugee agency, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR), was founded to help displaced Europeans. At the end of the 1940s millions of people were still trying to find their way home, or find a new home in Europe. The UNHCR’s groundbreaking work in Europe won it a Nobel peaceprize in 1954. Since then it has helped millions of people. The UNHCR moved into Africa in the 1960s as decolonisation brought the large-scale movement of vulnerable people. Crises in Asia and Latin America later saw it put the 1951 convention on refugees into practice on a global scale. While the international media focus on the dangerous journey of refugees across the Mediterranean, it is in the vast camps of Africa and the Middle East that the UNHCR works with the largest numbers of people. Developing countries host more than 86% of the world’s refugees. Since the beginning of 2014, 190,000 Sudanese refugees, mainly women and children, have arrived in south-western Ethiopia. It is in these forgotten pockets of suffering that the UNHCR carries out vital work, housing and educating those refugees who have been displaced so long there is no “home” for them to go back to. There are 50 million people displaced around the world and global leadership on the issue is needed more than ever. The UNHCR campaigns for what it calls “durable solutions”, the three most common being repatriation, local integration or resettlement overseas. But it has not been able to persuade the EU to offer places to significant numbers of Syrians, let alone to refugees from other countries. The agency is particularly keen to move on from the idea of camps. Thehigh commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, questioned why the UNHCR was colluding with host states in restricting the freedom of movement of refugees. Since then there has been a commitment towards encouraging refugees to settle alongside local communities in urban and rural settings where they can access work more easily. But huge challenges lie ahead for the UNHCR. Its vision of durable solutions for large numbers of the world’s displaced people is simply unpalatable to the majority of countries that could provide those solutions. In praise of... Eight-year-old Omar is a Syrian refugee in Lebanon embarking on a new life in Finland, thanks to the UNHCR resettlement programme. He is incredibly excited about his first journey on a plane. “It goes above the clouds? Above the rain?” Omar and his sister Majid have a growth-hormone deficiency. Neither can grow without continuous hormone and vitamin treatment, which they can’t afford since they fled Syria. As well as looking forward to starting school again, Omar wants to grow bigger. “I need treatment so I can become tall, become a man and get married. And you know how children hit me now? When I start growing up, I can defend myself.” |