The State of The World's Refugees 1997: A Humanitarian Agenda
State of the World's Refugees, 1 January 1997
The 1990s witnessed a series of civil wars and communal conflicts in which masses of people were obliged to flee for their lives. Millions of women, men and children were forced to abandon their homes. Increasingly, mass population displacements have become both an objective and a tactic of war.
In this book, UNHCR provides a topical and detailed examination of the problem of forced displacement, focusing on the different groups of people who are protected and assisted by the organization. The book sets out a wide-ranging agenda for action, suggesting many ways in which the security of these gropups might be safeguarded more effectively.
The protection of millions of uprooted or stateless people is UNHCR's core mandate.
Answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about stateless people and what UNHCR does to help them, published 2011.
Edited by Erika Feller, Volker Türk and Frances Nicholson, published 2003 by Cambridge University Press
The State of the World's Refugees
These five editions of UNHCR's The State of the World's Refugees provide detailed, in-depth analysis of the plight of the world's millions of displaced people. The authors examine the major crises and challenges faced by UNHCR for over fifty years.
Voluntary repatriation, local integration, resettlement, the three key solutions.
From life-saving aid to help with shelter, health, water, education and more.
Teaching About Refugees, History
History includes refugees
Throughout history, political turmoil has victimized many civilian families, forcing them to flee their homes. Refugee outflows and other massive displacements of people are a key aspect of many international crises. For children, in particular, looking at world events from the point of view of a refugee family can give new meaning and a sense of reality to events that may otherwise seem abstract and far away. The theme can be introduced in:
Medieval/early modern history: The religious wars.
Contemporary history: World War I, the Russian Revolution, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Second World War and Nazism, colonization and decolonization in Africa, Soviet influence in Central and Eastern Europe, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Vietnam War, the dictatorships in Latin-America - all these events and many more have victimized millions of people and forced them to flee their homes, families and communities.
| 9-11 year olds |
Refugees in History
|
| 12-14 year olds |
The Rwandan Crisis 1994
|
| 15-18 year olds |
Population Displacement in the Commonwealth of Independent States
|
Studying history can provide an opportunity to examine refugee outflows and displacement.
UNHCR advocates fair and efficient procedures for asylum-seekers
All in the same boat: The challenges of mixed migration around the world.
Millions of stateless people are left in a legal limbo, with limited basic rights.
The internally displaced seek safety in other parts of their country, where they need help.
Results from UNHCR's research project on the application of key provisions of the Asylum Procedures Directive in selected European Union Member States, March 2010.
Numbers are important in the aid business and UNHCR's statisticians monitor them daily.
The two UN statelessness conventions are the key legal instruments in the protection of stateless people around the world.
Statelessness in Kyrgyzstan
Two decades after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, thousands of people in former Soviet republics like Kyrgyzstan are still facing problems with citizenship. UNHCR has identified more than 20,000 stateless people in the Central Asian nation. These people are not considered as nationals under the laws of any country. While many in principle fall under the Kyrgyz citizenship law, they have not been confirmed as nationals under the existing procedures.
Most of the stateless people in Kyrgyzstan have lived there for many years, have close family links in the country and are culturally and socially well-integrated. But because they lack citizenship documents, these folk are often unable to do the things that most people take for granted, including registering a marriage or the birth of a child, travelling within Kyrgyzstan and overseas, receiving pensions or social allowances or owning property. The stateless are more vulnerable to economic hardship, prone to higher unemployment and do not enjoy full access to education and medical services.
Since independence in 1991, Kyrgyzstan has taken many positive steps to reduce and prevent statelessness. And UNHCR, under its statelessness mandate, has been assisting the country by providing advice on legislation and practices as well as giving technical assistance to those charged with solving citizenship problems. The refugee agency's NGO partners provide legal counselling to stateless people and assist them in their applications for citizenship.
However, statelessness in Kyrgyzstan is complex and thousands of people, mainly women and children, still face legal, administrative and financial hurdles when seeking to confirm or acquire citizenship. In 2009, with the encouragement of UNHCR, the government adopted a national action plan to prevent and reduce statelessness. In 2011, the refugee agency will help revise the plan and take concrete steps to implement it. A concerted effort by all stakeholders is needed so that statelessness does not become a lingering problem for future generations.
Statelessness in Kyrgyzstan
Statelessness in Viet Nam
Viet Nam's achievements in granting citizenship to thousands of stateless people over the last two years make the country a global leader in ending and preventing statelessness.
Left stateless after the 1975 collapse of the bloody Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, nearly 1,400 former Cambodian refugees received citizenship in Viet Nam in 2010, the culmination of five years of cooperation between the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Vietnamese government. Most of the former refugees have lived in Viet Nam since 1975, all speak Vietnamese and have integrated fully. Almost 1,000 more are on track to get their citizenship in the near future. With citizenship comes the all-important family registration book that governs all citizens' interactions with the government in Viet Nam, as well as a government identification card. These two documents allow the new citizens to purchase property, attend universities and get health insurance and pensions. The documents also allow them to do simple things they could not do before, such as own a motorbike.
Viet Nam also passed a law in 2009 to restore citizenship to Vietnamese women who became stateless in the land of their birth after they married foreign men, but divorced before getting foreign citizenship for them and their children.
UNHCR estimates that up to 12 million people around the world are currently stateless.
Statelessness in Viet Nam
Statelessness among Brazilian Expats
Irina was born in 1998 in Switzerland, daughter of a Brazilian mother and her Swiss boyfriend. Soon afterwards, her mother Denise went to the Brazilian Consulate in Geneva to get a passport for Irina. She was shocked when consular officials told her that under a 1994 amendment to the constitution, children born overseas to Brazilians could not automatically gain citizenship. To make matters worse,the new-born child could not get the nationality of her father at birth either. Irina was issued with temporary travel documents and her mother was told she would need to sort out the problem in Brazil.
In the end, it took Denise two years to get her daughter a Brazilian birth certificate, and even then it was not regarded as proof of nationality by the authorities. Denise turned for help to a group called Brasileirinhos Apátridas (Stateless Young Brazilians), which was lobbying for a constitutional amendment to guarantee nationality for children born overseas with at least one Brazilian parent.
In 2007, Brazil's National Congress approved a constitutional amendment that dropped the requirement of residence in Brazil for receiving citizenship. In addition to benefitting Irina, the law helped an estimated 200,000 children, who would have otherwise been left stateless and without many of thebasic rights that citizens enjoy. Today, children born abroad to Brazilian parents automatically receive Brazilian nationality at birth.
"As a mother it was impossible to accept that my daughter wasn't considered Brazilian like me and her older brother, who was also born in Switzerland before the 1994 constitutional change," said Denise. "For me, the fact that my daughter would depend on a tourist visa to live in Brazil was an aberration."
Irina shares her mother's discomfort. "It's quite annoying when you feel you belong to a country and your parents only speak to you in that country's language, but you can't be recognized as a citizen of that country. It feels like they are stealing your childhood," the 12-year-old said.
Statelessness among Brazilian Expats
UNHCR : Breakthrough on Statelessness
UNHCR's ministerial conference in Geneva takes a great step forward in resolving the issue of statelessness. On the sidelines of the meeting, Serbia and Turkmenistan acceded to the statelessness conventions.
Pakistan: One Year after the Floods
A year after the most devastating floods in Pakistan's history, life is still not back to normal for some people in the picturesque Swat Valley.
Malta: Angelina Jolie meets asylum seekers
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie visits an old air force base on Malata and talks to asylum-seekers who have fled North Africa.
| 
| 
| 
