• The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was established on December, 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 also has a mandate to help stateless people. It is headquartered at Geneva, Switzerland.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

• The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a UN agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to a third country.
• UNHCR headquarter is in Geneva, Switzerland, with over 17,300 staff working in 135 countries.
• Head of UNHCR is Filippo Grandi.

Historical Background

• UNHCR was created in 1950 to address the refugee crisis that resulted from World War II.
• The 1951 Refugee Convention established the scope and legal framework of the agency's work, which initially focused on Europeans uprooted by the war.
• Beginning in the late 1950s, displacement caused by other conflicts, from the Hungarian Uprising to the decolonization of Africa and Asia, broadened the scope of UNHCR's operations.
• Commensurate with the 1967 Protocol to the Refugee Convention, which expanded the geographic and temporal scope of refugee assistance, UNHCR operated across the world, with the bulk of its activities in developing countries.
• By its 65th anniversary in 2015, the agency had assisted more than 50 million refugees worldwide.
• As of June 2020, UNHCR has over 20 million refugees under its mandate.

Functions of UNHCR

• The agency is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees (other than Palestinian refugees, who are assisted by United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)) 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.
• UNHCR's mandate has gradually been expanded to include protecting and providing humanitarian assistance to whom it describes as other persons "of concern," including internally displaced persons (IDPs) who would fit the legal definition of a refugee under the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and 1967 Protocol, the 1969 Organization for African Unity Convention, or some other treaty if they left their country, but who presently remain in their country of origin.
• UNHCR presently has major missions in Lebanon, South Sudan, Chad/Darfur, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan as well as Kenya to assist and provide services to IDPs and refugees in camps and in urban settings.
• UNHCR maintains a database of refugee information, ProGres, which was created during the Kosovo War in the 1990s. The database today contains data on over 11 million refugees or about 11% of all displaced persons globally. The database contains biometric data, including fingerprints and iris scans and is used to determine aid distribution for recipients.
• Note: Palestinian refugees living in the regions covered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) are not under the care of UNHCR.

Funding and Budget

• Consequently, its annual budget has grown from US$300,000 in 1951 to US$8.6 billion in 2019, making it one of the largest UN agencies by expenditure.
• The vast majority of UNCHR's budget comes from voluntary contributions, mostly from member states; the largest donors are the United States, the European Union, and Germany.
• The agency's work includes providing protection, shelter, healthcare and emergency relief, assisting in resettlement and repatriation, and advocating for national and multilateral policies on behalf of refugees.

Achievements of UNHCR

• Since 1954, the UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award has been annually awarded to a person or an organization in recognition of outstanding service to the cause of refugees, displaced or stateless people.
• The UNHCR itself was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1954 and 1981. The UNHCR was awarded the Indira Gandhi Prize in 2015.
• In 1991 was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation.
• It publishes Global Trends Report on Forced Displacements annually.

New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants

• On September 19, 2016, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants.
• The New York Declaration reaffirms the importance of the international refugee regime and contains a wide range of commitments by Member States to strengthen and enhance mechanisms to protect people on the move.
• It has paved the way for the adoption of two new global compacts in 2018: a global compact on refugees and a global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration.
• The New York Declaration sets out the key elements of a Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) to be applied to large-scale movements of refugees and protracted refugee situations.
• The CRRF focuses on the importance of supporting those countries and communities that host large number of refugees, promoting the inclusion of refugees in host communities, ensuring the involvement of development actors from an early stage, and developing a ‘whole-of-society’ approach to refugee responses.

The four key objectives of New York declaration are to:

1. Ease the pressures on host countries and communities;
2. Enhance refugee self-reliance;
3. Expand third-country solutions; and
4. Support conditions in countries of origin for return in safety and dignity.

The Global Compact on Refugees

• The Global Compact on Refugees is a framework for more predictable and equitable responsibility-sharing, recognizing that a sustainable solution to refugee situations cannot be achieved without international cooperation.
• It provides a blueprint for governments, international organizations, and other stakeholders to ensure that host communities get the support they need and that refugees can lead productive lives.
• It constitutes a unique opportunity to transform the way the world responds to refugee situations, benefiting both refugees and the communities that host them.

The Global Compact for safe, orderly and regular migration

• The New York Declaration also provides for the negotiation of a global, compact for safe, orderly and regular migration, which is to be adopted in 2018.
• Although they are to be run at the same time, the General Assembly has directed that the two processes leading to the two global compacts are to be “separate, distinct and independent”.
• The migration compact will enhance coordination on international migration and present a framework for comprehensive international cooperation on migrants and human mobility.
• UNHCR has been asked, in the New York Declaration, to also contribute to this process and to help in the elaboration of non-binding principles for migrants in vulnerable situations.