Today's date:
Basic facts
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was established on December 14, 1950 by the United Nations General Assembly. The agency is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee 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.
In more than five decades, the agency has helped an estimated 50 million
people restart their lives. As of April 2008, a staff of around 6,351 people
in 117 countries continued to help 32.9 million persons worldwide, an increase
of 58 percent over the previous year’s 20.8 million.
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A history of the Refugee Convention
Questions and Answers
(pdf)
Adopted by the Colloquium on the International Protection of Refugees in Central America, Mexico and Panama, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, 22 November 1984
(pdf)
Adopted by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government at its Sixth Ordinary Session, Addis-Ababa, 10 September 1969
Answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about refugees themselves and how the agency attempts to help them. (pdf, 3Mb)
UN General Assembly resolution establishing the High Commissioner’s Office for Refugees as of 1 January 1951.
Earlier leaders of the Refugee Agency.
The Palestinians
In 1948 the UN General Assembly established
UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Work
Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Middle
East, to assist those Palestinians who had been
displaced when the State of Israel was established.
The agency operates in Jordan,
Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank.
(www.un.unrwa.org)
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Cartagena Declaration on Refugees