UNHCR and current challenges in international refugee protection

Refuge

Volumn 22, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 6-17

  Kelley, Ninette ^a   Durieux, Jean Francois ^a  

^a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees   (Switzerland)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HUMAN RIGHTS; REFUGEE; UNITED NATIONS;

EID: 24944487630     PISSN: 02295113     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (24)

1. The first formal international effort to provide protection for refugees was thirty years earlier when the League of Nations elected Fridtjof Nansen as High Commissioner for Refugees. Nansen was mandated to provide protection for specified groups of refugees, initially Russian refugees and later also Armenian, Greek, Bulgarian, and other groups of refugees.
2. nd edition, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 46.
3. For example, the same rights as nationals in regard to primary education, access to the courts and national social assistance and welfare, and the most favourable treatment accorded to foreign nationals in regard to wage-earning employment and freedom of association. For a review of these provisions and State practice, see UNHCR, Note on International Protection, Executive Committee of the High Commissioner's Programme, A/AC.96/951, 13 September 2001.
4. An expanded definition of "refugee" was also adopted regionally within the Organization of African Unity (OAU). In 1969, in recognition that the causes of massive refugee displacements were not limited to individual persecution, the OAU adopted a convention that expanded the definition of "refugee" to include not only those fleeing persecution according to the 1951 Convention definition, but also those fleeing violence and conflict and at risk of indiscriminate harm. Subsequently, in 1984, a colloquium of Central American government representatives and jurists also approved a broader definition of "refugee," similar to that contained in the OAU Convention. Known as the Cartagena Declaration, although not legally binding, the definition recommended in it has been incorporated into domestic legislation by some States and used as a matter of practice by others in the region.
5. The legal basis for this is found in paragraphs 3 and 9 of the UNHCR's Statute. Paragraph 3 provides that: "the High Com missioner shall follow policy directives given to him by the General Assembly or the Economic and Social Council." Paragraph 9 states that the "High Commissioner shall engage in such additional activities, including repatriation and resettlement, as the General Assembly may determine, within the limits of the resources placed at his disposal." For a complete compendium of GA and ECOSOC resolutions relating to issues of concern to the UNHCR, see UNHCR, Thematic Compilation of General Assembly and Economic and Social Council Resolutions (Department of International Protection, 2003).
6. UNHCR, Refugees by Number: 2003. Of this total number, 10.4 million are refugees and 10.2 million are others of concern to the Office.
7. UNHCR, Statistical Yearbook, 2001, 112-13. These figures are taken from thirty-eight industrialized countries in Europe, North America, Asia, and Oceania.
8. For example, they fell to 377,839 in 1997 and have not exceeded 625,000 in any subsequent year. Ibid.
9. and UNHCR, Asylum Applications Lodged in Industrialized Countries: Levels and Trends, 2000-2002, March 2003, 7.
10. UNHCR, Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries 2003, 3, 9.
11. Over 65 per cent of the global refugee population is hosted by developing countries, and more than 30 per cent by the Least Developed Countries (LDC) in the world. UNHCR, Framework for Durable Solutions for Refugees and Persons of Concern, May 2003.
12. For more on this see UNHCR, The State of the World's Refugees 2000, 248-49.
13. For one of the many press reports on the differences, see "Refugee Camps in Africa and Europe Are a World Apart," Los Angeles Times, 22 May, 1999.
14. Ian Smilie and Larry Minear, The Quality of Money: Donor Behavior in Humanitarian Financing (Boston, MA: Tufts University Humanitarianism and War Project, 2003); online: 〈 http://hwproject.tufts.edu/new/pdf/donor_behav. pdf〉.
15. A point made forcefully by the South African delegation at the first meeting of the High Commissioner's Forum, 21 June 2003.
16. th Session of the General Assembly on Agenda Item 104, 13 November, 2002.
17. I b i d.
18. This was stressed by the African Group at the First Meeting of the High Commissioner's Forum, 27 June 2003.
19. The expert papers presented at each roundtable and the Summary Conclusions of those meetings have been published in E. Feller, V. Turk and F. Nicholson, eds., Refugee Protection in International Law: UNHCR's Global Consultations on International Protection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
20. Five such guidelines have been introduced as of January 2004 on membership in a particular social group, gender-related persecution, cessation, internal flight alternative, and exclusion.
21. United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/58/153, "Implementing Actions by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to strengthen the capacity of his office to carry out its mandate," 22 Dec. 2003.
22. Specifically, the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.
23. UNHCR, "Report by the High Commissioner to the General Assembly on Strengthening the Capacity of the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees to Carry out its Mandate," 20 August 2003, A/AC.96/980.
24. See above, note 10.