Refugees
There are an estimated 80 million refugees and forcibly displaced persons worldwide affecting almost every continent and country. The causes of the refugee crisis are complex including external and internal conflicts, human rights violations, searing poverty and famine, racial hatred and ethnic violence.
Instruments for protection and humanitarian assistance
The United Nations system for the protection and humanitarian assistance to refugees rests on two pillars:
- The Geneva Convention from 1951, Convention relating to the Status of Refugees with its additional Protocol relating to the Status of Refugeesfrom 1967.
- The Statute of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, is mandated to lead and coordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide with the primary concern to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. In the course of time, however, the UNHCR has been called upon, to concern itself with longterm solutions, such as voluntary repatriation and reintegration. UNHCR works in close cooperation with a number of actors including UN programmes and agencies, international and regional organizations, NGOs and governments and local authorities.
World Refugee Day
As proclaimed by the General Assembly, World Refugee Day is observed annually on 20 June.
The UN General Assembly, on 4 December 2000, adopted resolution 55/76 where it noted that 2001 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, and that the Organization of African Unity (OAU) had agreed to have International Refugee Day coincide with Africa Refugee Day on 20 June.
UN programmes, funds, agencies and committees involved in refugee and disaster relief
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UN body |
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More information in DagDok |
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Food and Agriculture Organization |
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Inter-Agency Standing Committee |
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United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
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Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict |
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United Nations Development Programme |
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United Nations Population Fund |
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United Nations Human Settlements Programme |
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United Nations High Comissioner for Refugees |
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United Nations Children's Fund |
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International Strategy for Disaster Reduction |
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United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees |
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World Food Programme |
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World Health Organization |
More on UN and refugees
- UNHCR. The convention and its protocol as well as information about signatures, ratifications, reservations and preparatory work/'travaux préparatoires'. The website provides background information, news, statistics, country surveys and reports.
The United Nations has adopted several instruments for the protection of refugees:
- Statute of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, adopted by General Assembly resolution, A/RES/428 (V), of 14 December 1950.
- Convention relating to the Status of Refugees adopted by the United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiarities on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons under General Assembly resolution, A/RES/429 (V), of 14 December 1950. Entered into force: 22 April 1954, in accordance with article 43.
- Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, 1966, entered into force 4 October 1967.
- Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, 1998.
- Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants #UN4RefugeesMigrants.
- RefWorld UNHCR's database for refugee information. Contents:
- Country information, such as country reports and profiles, news and maps.
- International and national law related to refugees
- Statistics
- References to book, articles and conference papers.
Websites and research guides
- Refugees and asylum seekers. A research guide by the UN library in Geneva.
- For more information about the UNHCR documentation, see DagDok on UNHCR.
Key UN documents
- UN Charter in Swedish | in English
- UN System Chart
- Yearbook of the United Nations
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Swedish | in English
- Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action
- Statue of the International Court of Justice
UN documents and publications in catalogues and databases
- United Nations Digital Library offers UN documents and open access publications, UN voting data and speeches, UN maps, Content in 6+ languages. Replaces the traditional online catalogue UNBISnet.
- UN iLibrary UN publications online covering different topics.
- ODS full-text UN documents published from 1993 onward and scanned documents published between 1946 and 1993 in the official languages of the UN.
- Daily list of documents (ODS). Documents published for the day, with full text links, can be found in the United Nations full text database ODS.
- UNBIS Thesaurus a multilingual database of the controlled vocabulary used to describe UN documents.
- Index to proceedings is an annual bibliographic guide to the proceedings and documentation of the major UN organs. The index includes:
- a list of all documents
- a comprehensive subject index
- an index to speeches
- a voting chart of resolutions
- United Nations Documents Index (United Nations Digital Library) References to all documents by subject area are published. A collection of indexes is held by the Dag Hammarskjöld and Law Library, Uppsala, and the Libraries at UN Headquarters in New York and Geneva.