UNHCR welcomes establishment of Spain?s resettlement programme
Briefing Notes, 2 February 2010
This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at the press briefing, on 2 February 2010, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
UNHCR welcomes the approval by the Council of Ministers of Spain on 29 January of the establishment of an annual refugee resettlement programme, in accordance with the recently amended asylum law. Spain, which took up the EU's rotating Presidency for 6 months starting January 1, 2010, will join twelve other European countries (Czech, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Sweden and the UK) which have annual resettlement programmes. Last year Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Luxembourg also implemented ad hoc resettlement programmes.
Resettlement is an important tool of refugee protection and provides a durable solution every year for tens of thousands of refugees who cannot safely remain in their first countries of asylum, and for whom return to their countries of origin is not possible.
UNHCR recently also welcomed the European Commission's proposal for the establishment of a Joint EU Resettlement Programme. UNHCR would like to see more European engagement in refugee resettlement, and hopes the Spanish decision will encourage other EU Member States to follow. At present, 90% of the refugees resettled every year are taken in by the United States, Canada and Australia. All European countries together provide roughly 6% of the world's resettlement opportunities. In 2009, UNHCR assisted around 66,000 refugees to resettle, of whom roughly 5,000 went to European countries. Information on resettlement programmes can be found on UNHCR's website here
A relevant handbook on the reception and integration of resettled refugees.
A repository for exchanging ideas on resettlement partnerships, June 2011.
An alternative for those who cannot go home, made possible by UNHCR and governments.
July 2011 edition of the UNHCR Resettlement Handbook.
A Place to Call Home(Part 2): 1996 - 2003
This gallery highlights the history of UNHCR's efforts to help some of the world's most disenfranchised people to find a place called home, whether through repatriation, resettlement or local integration.
After decades of hospitality after World War II, as the global political climate changed and the number of people cared for by UNHCR swelled from around one million in 1951, to more than 27 million people in the mid-1990s, the welcome mat for refugees was largely withdrawn.
Voluntary repatriation has become both the preferred and only practical solution for today's refugees. In fact, the great majority of them choose to return to their former homes, though for those who cannot do so for various reasons, resettlement in countries like the United States and Australia, and local integration within regions where they first sought asylum, remain important options.
This gallery sees Rwandans returning home after the 1994 genocide; returnees to Kosovo receiving reintegration assistance; Guatemalans obtaining land titles in Mexico; and Afghans flocking home in 2003 after decades in exile.
A Place to Call Home(Part 2): 1996 - 2003
Out of Harm's Way in Romania
Peaceful days and a safe environment is probably more than these Palestinian and Sudanese refugees expected when they were stuck in a desert camp in Iraq. Now they are recovering at a special transit centre in the Romanian city of Timisoara while their applications for resettlement in a third country are processed.
Most people forced to flee their homes are escaping from violence or persecution, but some find themselves still in danger after arriving at their destination. UNHCR uses the centre in Romania to bring such people out of harm's way until they can be resettled.
The Emergency Transit Centre (ETC) in Timisoara was opened in 2008. Another one will be formally opened in Humenné, Slovakia, within the coming weeks. The ETC provides shelter and respite for up to six months, during which time the evacuees can prepare for a new life overseas. They can attend language courses and cultural orientation classes.
Out of Harm's Way in Romania
A Place to Call Home (Part 1): 1953 - 1995
Based on the 2004 World Refugee Day theme, "A place to call home: Rebuilding lives in safety and dignity", this two-part gallery highlights the history of UNHCR's efforts to help some of the world's most disenfranchised people to find a place called home, whether through repatriation, resettlement or local integration.
In more than a half century of humanitarian work, the UN refugee agency has helped more than 50 million uprooted people across the globe to successfully restart their lives.
Following the end of World War II and in the prevailing climate of the Cold War, many refugees, including those fleeing Soviet-dominated countries or the aftermath of the conflict in Indo China, were welcomed by the countries to which they initially fled or resettled in states even further afield.
In Part 1 of the gallery, a family restarts its life in New Zealand in the 1950s after years in a German camp; Vietnamese children make their first snowman in Sweden; while two sisters rebuild their home after returning to post-war Mozambique in the early 1990s.
A Place to Call Home (Part 1): 1953 - 1995
A new life for refugees from Bhutan
They fled to Nepal from Bhutan amid ethnic tensions in the early 1990s. Now, many of the slightly more than 100,000 refugees have been offered the possibility of resettlement to another country.
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