UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi called for urgent action to address the increasingly desperate situation of refugees and migrants in reception centres in the Aegean islands. “Conditions on the islands are shocking and shameful,” said Grandi. “Greece – with European support – has to act now to deal with an untenable situation, while the longer-term measures are put in place.”
Displaced Persons and Refugees
Nakout hasn’t seen her daughter Achan since she was kidnapped by a Ugandan rebel group in 2003. After escaping from the group, Nakout became a refugee in Finland. She has written a letter to her long-lost daughter in the hope they can begin to rebuild their relationship.
Out of 1.4 million refugees estimated to be in urgent need of resettlement worldwide, only 63,696 were resettled through UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, last year. While the number of refugees resettled in 2019 increased modestly by 14 per cent when compared to the previous year, in which 55,680 people were resettled, a tremendous gap remains between resettlement needs and the places made available by governments around the world.
Four years ago Maya Ghazal fled the fighting in Syria. All refugees come to a new country hoping for a fresh start, but Maya stands out because of the determination with which she has pursued her goals. Now a trainee pilot, she’s advocating for opportunities for refugees.
It was as joyous a boat trip as they will ever take. The passengers sang cheerfully from the moment the launch left the dock in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were refugees, 200 of them returning home across the Oubangui River, to the Central African Republic, or CAR, for the first time in six years. They had fled violence and upsurges of civil conflict that erupted in 2013. Now, thanks to a voluntary repatriation agreement signed in July between the governments of the two countries and UNHCR, they were going back.
On graduation day, proud parents Osmar and Valeria beamed with pride. But this very special graduation honoured the accomplishments not only of the couple’s two school-age children, but rather of the whole family, marking their completion of a programme aimed at helping lift refugees out of extreme poverty and giving them the tools to rebuild their lives.“They trained us in entrepreneurship, and we also took a class about how to manage our finances,” said Valeria, a 32-year-old former hairdresser from Venezuela, who opened her own event planning business after fleeing to Ecuador. After receiving accommodation assistance from UNHCR and its partner in Ecuador, the family was selected to participate in a refugee integration and poverty prevention programme known as the Graduation Model.
Abdulqader, a school principal in North Darfur, tells the story of how he returned to the village and re-opened the school, after several years of displacement.
In this quiz, you are the leader of a country which is about to become home to a large number of refugees. What kind of leader are you?
It is important to recall that everyone has the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution in other countries, as set out in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Rather than abiding by international law simply because it exists, we need to remind ourselves why it exists. It is rooted in our collective desire to protect the vulnerable and render what help we can to those most in need of it.
Today, there are more refugees than directly after World War II. The World Bank is helping refugees and host communities directly. Also, by addressing the underlying drivers of conflict, it's aiming to reduce factors causing people to flee their homes.
A new social media campaign launched by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, celebrates the strength, resilience and skills that refugees can bring to their new communities. The campaign kicked off with a powerful multi-voice video in which refugees are joined by celebrities and advocates to rally support around the core message of the Global Refugee Forum – that everyone has a role to play in helping refugees.