UNHCR
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR gives protection and support to refugees globally. Established in 1950, it is one of the most important humanitarian organizations in the world. It is headquartered in Geneva, with regional offices in over 120 countries. More than 80 percent of the agency's staff work in the field.
Mandate of the High Commissioner
The UNHCR is mandated by its Statute and guided by the definitions of the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol. Its mandate has, however, gradually been expanded to include protecting and providing humanitarian assistance to other persons of concern, including internally displaced persons. The UNHCR seeks lasting solutions by assisting refugees to return to their own country and integrate locally, or resettle in another country.
Who the UNHCR helps:
- Asylum-Seekers
- Children
- Internally Displaced People
- Men
- Older People
- People with Disabilities
- Refugees
- Returnees
- Ending statelessness
- Women
UNHCR Northern Europe
UNHCR Northern Europe. UNHCR’s activities in the Northern Europe region are currently overseen by the UNHCR Regional Representation for Northern Europe located in Stockholm, Sweden, in addition to the UNHCR Regional Liaison Office, Vilnius, Lithuania.
See also DagDok on Refugees.
More on UNHCR
The UNHCR website provides background information, news, full text documents, reports and statistics.
The 1951 Geneva Convention with the 1967 Protocol is issued in several versions:
- Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.
- Final Act of the United Nations Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons and Text of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees : Resolution 2198 (XXI) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly and Text of the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees.
- The 1951 Refugee Convention with the 1967 protocol. See the UNHCR website for the convention and its protocol. There you can also access information about signatures, ratifications, reservations and preparatory work, the so called Travaux préparatoires.
- UNHCR publications and resources on refugee related issues, such as:
- UNHCR Global Report. An annual survey of the activities of UNHCR.
- The State of the World's Refugees provides an overview of key contemporary developments related to the displacement of people throughout the world. It provides statistical tables, graphs and maps. A selection of reports are posted at the UNHCR website.
- UNHCR Statistics - The World in Numbers. UNHCR provides data, trends and statistical reports.
- RefWorld, UNHCR's database for refugee information. Contents:
- Full text documents
- Country information, such as country reports and profiles, news and maps
- International and national law related to refugees
- Refugee case law
- Statistics
- References to book, articles and conference papers.
- Official Records of the General Assembly. No. 12. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees submits an annual report to the General Assembly in this documentary series.
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 1981 and 1954.
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.
- All UN documents from 1993-.
- All resolutions of the Principal Organs from 1946-.
- All Security Council plenary documents from 1946- in English, French and Spanish.
- All supplements to the General Assembly Official Records (GAOR) from 1946-.
- All General Assembly plenary meeting records from 1946- in English, French and Spanish.
- Older documents are being scanned: Update on UN Digitization Programme.