scholarly journals Refugees: Challenges to Protection

2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy S. Goodwin-Gill
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Strategic Thinking ◽  
High Time ◽  
Years Of Experience ◽  
United Nations High Commissioner ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
The Future ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Year 2000

By the end of the year 2000, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees will have been in existence for 50 years –which is probably some sort of record for an organization originally set up with just a three-year mandate. There were many reasons for so limiting the successor agency to the International Refugee Organization, but it is doubtful whether anyone seriously thought that refugee problems would be resolved so quickly, or indeed that UNHCR would develop into the highly operational, visible and extensively funded entity that we see today. Fifty years of experience nevertheless suggests that it is high time for an audit, for an evaluation of strengths, weaknesses and achievements, and a little strategic thinking about the future.

Protection by Action

1988 ◽  
Vol 28 (265) ◽  
pp. 325-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Hocké
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Main Function ◽  
World War ◽  
United Nations High Commissioner ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Refugee Problem ◽  
Second World

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was set up in 1951 with the main function of providing protection for refugees. This mandate corresponded to the task immediately confronting it, that of solving the refugee problem affecting Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian MacNaughton ◽  
Mariah McGill
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Limited Capacity ◽  
United Nations High Commissioner ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Right

For over two decades, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has taken a leading role in promoting human rights globally by building the capacity of people to claim their rights and governments to fulfill their obligations. This chapter examines the extent to which the right to health has evolved in the work of the OHCHR since 1994, drawing on archival records of OHCHR publications and initiatives, as well as interviews with OHCHR staff and external experts on the right to health. Analyzing this history, the chapter then points to factors that have facilitated or inhibited the mainstreaming of the right to health within the OHCHR, including (1) an increasing acceptance of economic and social rights as real human rights, (2) right-to-health champions among the leadership, (3) limited capacity and resources, and (4) challenges in moving beyond conceptualization to implementation of the right to health.

Mandate or Donors? Explaining the UNHCR’s Country-Level Expenditures from 1967 to 2016

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172097433
Author(s):  
Svanhildur Thorvaldsdottir ◽  
Ronny Patz ◽  
Klaus H Goetz
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Voluntary Contributions ◽  
United Nations High Commissioner ◽  
Country Level ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
Donor Influence ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Major Donors ◽  
Expenditure Allocation

In recent decades, many international organizations have become almost entirely funded by voluntary contributions. Much existing literature suggests that major donors use their funding to refocus international organizations’ attention away from their core mandate and toward serving donors’ geostrategic interests. We investigate this claim in the context of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), examining whether donor influence negatively impacts mandate delivery and leads the organization to direct expenditures more toward recipient countries that are politically, economically, or geographically salient to major donors. Analyzing a new dataset of UNHCR finances (1967–2016), we find that UNHCR served its global mandate with considerable consistency. Applying flexible measures of collective donor influence, so-called “influence-weighted interest scores,” our findings suggest that donor influence matters for the expenditure allocation of the agency, but that mandate-undermining effects of such influence are limited and most pronounced during salient refugee situations within Europe.

The Repatriation and Resettlement of the Southern Sudanese

1972 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 23-26
Author(s):  
Louise W. Holborn
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
Displaced Persons ◽  
Refugee Population ◽  
United Nations High Commissioner ◽  
The Past ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations

While the world press has focused over the past year on problems surrounding the creation of still another refugee population in Africa — that of Uganda's Asians — far too little attention has been directed to the remarkable though still fragile process of repatriation and resettlement of hundreds of thousands of Southern Sudanese. This population of displaced persons includes both refugees who fled to other countries and large numbers of homeless who hid in the bush during the civil war that wracked the Sudan for seventeen years, from 1955 through the first months of 1972. Responding to the initiatives of President Gaafar al-Nimeiry of the Sudan, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (HCR), under an explicit mandate from the Secretary- General of the United Nations, has been raising funds, organizing activities on behalf of the most pressing needs and working closely with all local interests to meet overwhelming problems.

Part II Sources, Ch.10 The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milner James ◽  
Ramasubramanyam Jay
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
The Political ◽  
Voluntary Contributions ◽  
Refugee Convention ◽  
United Nations High Commissioner ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
International Refugee Law ◽  
Over Time

This chapter addresses the role played by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the making and implementation of international refugee law. It begins by considering UNHCR’s mandate responsibilities and operational functions to better understand the structures that condition the scope of UNHCR’s engagement with the functioning of international law. While UNHCR’s 1950 Statute and the Refugee Convention both mandate UNHCR to serve particular functions, such as its supervisory responsibility relating to the Refugee Convention, its Statute also places particular constraints on UNHCR, especially in terms of the scope of its activities and its reliance on voluntary contributions from States to perform its mandated functions. The chapter then looks at how the roles UNHCR has played in the making and implementation of refugee law at the global, regional, and national levels, through its operations, and how these functions have evolved over time. By illustrating the various instances where UNHCR has demonstrated power, along with those instances where UNHCR has exhibited pathologies and has been constrained by the interests of States, the chapter points to the importance of understanding international refugee law within the political environment in which it functions.

When Perceptions and Aspirations Clash

2021 ◽  
pp. 86-110
Author(s):  
Dawn Chatty
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
United Nations High Commissioner ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Turkish State

This chapter talks about refugees crossing the borders into neighboring countries, which reveals a discrepancy between the reality on the ground and the standardized approaches taken by humanitarian actors. It cites Turkey as the country where the humanitarian presence was limited, and the Turkish state and civil society took the lead without the support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in responding to refugee needs. It also argues that the refugee response in Turkey was provided without undermining refugee agency and dignity. The chapter emphasizes that global templates for humanitarian assistance built from experiences in very different contexts and among populations of significantly different makeup are not easily integrated into Middle Eastern concepts of refuge, hospitality, and charity. It criticizes the architecture of assistance that was built upon templates developed largely among agrarian and poor developing countries.

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