The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is the world’s foremost entity devoted to the protection and assistance of refugees. This particular organization, although not associated with any particular government, has achieved significant progress in changing the world for the better through widespread publicity and on the ground activities that pressure governments and officials representing leaders to enact more humane treatments of dislocated peoples. Located in Geneva, Switzerland (the city that lent its name to the Articles from which the Commission was created), the UNHCR has received two well-deserved Nobel Prizes. These awards continue to provide the organization with much needed credibility (and therefore clout) and validate the efforts made on behalf of those displaced for any reason, conflicts and natural disasters high among the driving forces behind forced migrations. The current High Commissioner is António Guterres.

The UNHCR was started in 1950 as a replacement for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which had a much narrower mission: to aid the refugees and other “victims of war” of World War II. Since then, the mission has expanded significantly to include many other kinds of victims. Interestingly enough, the “United Nations” in the UNRRA title does not refer to the current United Nations entity, which was still two or three years in the making at the time of UNRRA’s establishment, but was simply used to designate World War II Allies.

The plight of refugees often includes an effort by the individual to seek asylum. UNRRA recognizes the difficulties experienced by asylum seekers sometimes the result of their non-state classification, which puts the burden of proof back onto the individuals, who often carry no identifying documents and cannot verify their claims of discrimination, violence, or political prisoner status. It is in this environment that individuals require the most assistance and where agency work is often focused on humanitarian efforts to relocate or at least create a stable short term solution that permits healing and restoration of dignity. A refugee almost always enters a world where nothing is certain and safety becomes everything.

Likewise, an asylum-seeker is defined as someone who claims to be a refugee but has not been ‘officially’ granted refugee status. An “internally displaced person” (IDP) is someone who has stayed within the borders of their own country but has been forced to relocate, either for similar reasons as refugees or (in extreme circumstances) for situations of natural disaster.