United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

UNHCR’s primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of people who have been forced to flee. Together with partners and communities, UNHCR works to ensure that everybody has the right to seek protection and find safe refuge.

UNHCR is the world’s leading organization charged with protecting refugees and other forcibly displaced people and with helping to resolve problems of statelessness. In the course of our 65-year history, the massive challenges of forced displacement have led us to move beyond our primary role in protecting and assisting refugees and helping to solve refugee problems, into a broader engagement with people forcibly displaced inside their own countries. Our work extends as well to important areas of prevention and stabilization, including efforts to address the situation of the world’s estimated 10 million stateless people.

For over half a century, UNHCR has helped millions of people to restart their lives. They include refugees, returnees, stateless people, the internally displaced and asylum-seekers.

The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol are the key legal documents that form the basis of UNHCR’s work. With 149 State parties to either or both, UNHCR promotes the human rights of refugees.