At the end of this year, a new High Commissioner for Refugees (HCR) will be appointed to take over the helm from Sadako Ogata, who has led UNHCR for the past 10 years. While the selection process has traditionally taken…
Gender and Development (GAD) takes as its starting point the idea that the behaviour of men and women is conditioned by social and cultural expectations, rather than by innate or natural differences between the two sexes. These assumed differences result…
Women’s issues have become increasingly central in UNHCR’s policies over the past 15 years. Often lumped together with children in surveys, they are perceived as vulnerable victims of war: “Among the people hit hardest by the violence and uncertainty of…
Young men are among the most visible of all groups in Puttalam District of the North Western Province, Sri Lanka. Almost 40 per cent of the young male residents are internally displaced Muslims expelled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil…
When displacement occurs, far more damage results than simply the loss and destruction of goods and property. People's lives and their social fabric are left in tatters; new, often unfamiliar, living environments affect the social roles and responsibilities of men…
Current interpretation of the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (the ‘Refugee Convention’) presents considerable difficulties for women when their fears of persecution arise out of forms of protest or ill treatment which are not considered ‘political’.…
On 5 December 2000, the UK’s Immigration Appellate Authority (the immigration and asylum tribunal) launched its Asylum Gender Guidelines for use in the determination of asylum appeals in the UK. The guidelines aim to assist judiciary at the Immigration Appellate…
The sexual violence against refugees in Kenya in the 1990s occurred against the backdrop of a huge increase in the refugee population, a shift in its ethnic composition and the rise of ethnicity as the dominant ideological force in Kenya's…
When Hurricane Mitch struck Central America in October 1998, it took the lives of nearly 10,000 people and left over 11,000 missing. It was a ‘super disaster’ causing severe and structural damage to homes, buildings, water and sanitation infrastructure, schools,…
At the UNHCR ExCom meetings in Geneva in 2000, opening remarks from High Commissioner Ogata, Secretary-General Annan and WFP Executive Director Bertini each highlighted concern over the security of humanitarian aid workers. Just a week earlier, directors and senior managers…