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…
After recent attacks UNHCR is unable to account for some 150,000 of the half million refugees in the country. Having fled wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, refugees are caught up in Guinea’s conflict as both rebels and the government…
Land disputes among returning war-affected population groups endanger peace efforts in many fragile post-conflict settings. During Liberia’s 15-year civil war, around one million people fled as IDPs or refugees, abandoning their houses and land. When some of them returned to…
Aid agencies also make choices, performing a form of 'triage' in which the needs of older people are considered of less importance than, for example, those of women and children. In research carried out in 1999-2000 on emergency responses in…
Rahma, a 77 year old woman from northern Iraq, lives with her son's widow and four grandchildren in Shorish collective town. Before, she lived peacefully with her husband, her four sons and only daughter in her original village where they…
Convened at the request of the UN General Assembly, this inter-governmental meeting was organised to assess the progress made in implementing the 1982 Vienna Plan of Action on Ageing adopted at the first Assembly and to take into account new…
UNHCR, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Red Cross Movement and HelpAge International (HAI) are among those who have attempted to incorporate programmes and policies directed towards older people, to develop training modules and best…
Refugee movements project vivid images of people, all their worldly possessions being carried, sad tired faces, swollen feet, dragging themselves along a long road to an uncertain future. Less often seen are the thousands of exhausted older refugees(1) struggling to…
In Africa, it is frequently older people who are left to nurse their own dying children and then to take care of their orphaned grandchildren. In Uganda, the total number of older refugees is 3,536, out of which 1,728 are…
I can confirm this from my own experience living for three years 1994-1996 in two massive Rwandan refugee camps in eastern Zaire. At that time I also worked for UNHCR in humanitarian assistance. Older refugees have special needs but seem…