UN Refugee Agency
Context:
- Nearly 6,77,000 refugees have fled the conflict in Ukraine for safety in neighbouring countries, while around a million people are estimated to be internally displaced, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
- The UN Refugee Agency chief Filippo Grandi said the numbers of people on the move was “extremely worrying”, as Russian troops pound cities in eastern Ukraine, on day six of Moscow’s invasion.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
- UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is an international organisation working to saving lives, safeguarding the rights and providing a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people.
- The organisation’s target audience includes refugees, people who are forcibly displaced from their homes, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons and stateless people.
- The UNHCR was established in 1950 in the wake of the mass displacements caused due to the Second World War in Europe.
- Since then, it has provided relief to thousands of refugees and displaced persons in many parts of the world.
- The UNHCR has also won the Nobel Prize for Peace twice (1954 and 1981).
- The chief legal document that governs the work of the UNHCR is the 1951 Refugee Convention.
- The organisation works in 135 countries and in India, has offices in New Delhi and Chennai. It first established its presence in India in 1981.
- The UNHCR is headed by the High Commissioner for Refugees.
- Its parent organisation is United Nations General Assembly.
- The UNHCR gives the Nansen Refugee Award annually to people who work in the field of refugee rights and protection.
Source: THE HINDU.
