Asylum and human rights Ireland’s deserved reputation for support for peace building and conflict resolution has been recognised by a seat on the UN Security Council. Ireland’s credibility has been further boosted by the recent pledge to reach by 2007,…
Refugee integration means building a new life with dignity, becoming an independent and productive member of society, being able to fend for oneself. It is a process by which refugees increasingly participate in all levels of society and become full…
The region continues to be an area of major refugee flows and, against a backdrop of burgeoning social, economic and ethnic tensions, the issues relating to these population movements are likely to become more complex. The increase in refugee flows…
In Afghanistan nearly one million people are internally displaced. In recent months alone, hundreds of thousands of Afghans have fled fighting, drought and famine. Africa is the most affected continent, hosting approximately half of the world’s internally displaced population. Over…
For the past half century UNHCR has been at the heart of international debates about human rights and international responsibility. In no other UN agency are values and principled ideas so central to the institutional mandate and raison d’etre or…
I was in Geneva interviewing officials regarding what they saw as the environmental demands and organisational reasons that accounted for the evolution of the agency’s repatriation policy. This particular official was slightly more vitriolic than most when it came to…
Tens of thousands of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and Croats in the area were expelled from their homes by Serb military, paramilitary forces, police and, often, neighbours. Some were killed while others were sent to camps in the area, where many…
Refugees languish in ‘no-mans land’ while countries close their borders, fearing de-stabilisation if too many are let in; men, women and children seeking asylum are detained, sometimes for months on end; refugees are caught in camps placed dangerously near the…
The fall of the Berlin wall was to usher in a new world order of peace and prosperity. The ‘peace dividend’ has proven short-lived. Militarisation is rampant, from nuclear sabre-rattling in the Indian sub-continent, the first Pan-African war engulfing the…
Fifty years on both the convention and UNHCR’s mandate still reflect the spirit of the times in which they were drafted. The funding problems that perennially haunt UNHCR result from decisions made in the tense early days of the Cold…