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World Refugee Day 2010

This year's World Refugee Day on June 20 has as its theme, "Home," in recognition of the plight of more than 40 million uprooted people around the world. Around 10 million of them are refugees of special concern to UNHCR.

At UNHCR we help people find new homes and new futures through resettlement, through voluntary repatriation and through local integration. Most of the time, and where it's possible, refugees prefer to return to their home countries. Nonetheless, and with conflict continuing or escalating in many countries, finding new homes and allowing people to restart their lives is increasingly difficult.

This year, for World Refugee Day, we are planning events around the world to highlight the plight of refugees under our care and to advocate on their behalf for the help they need. We will be asking you to think about what it means to be one of those millions of individual human beings. And we will ask you to contribute in whatever way you can to helping them rebuild their lives.

Help us help them to find a place to call home.

How You Can Help

Shanghai 2010 World Exposition

UNHCR has a busy programme of events lined up for China's first World Expo

WRD Live

WRD Live: UNHCR links directly to refugees in Syria, Ecuador, Malaysia and eastern Congo.

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On this, World Refugee Day, I ask you to help us help refugees find a place to call home.

High Commissioner António Guterres

World Refugee Day 2010

WRD Message: High Commissioner António Guterres pays tribute to refugees

World Refugee Day 2010

WRD Message: UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie says don't forget refugees

Finding home: UNHCR honours uprooted people on World Refugee Day

It's said that a man's home is his castle; a place of security and comfort. But for millions of people, home is a distant memory. It is a place they have had to flee to escape violence and persecution. Many end up living in a makeshift shelter or tent, either in their own country or in a foreign land. More than half of the refugees of concern to UNHCR now live in deprived urban areas.

Most dream of going home, others hope for resettlement and some are able to integrate in host countries. All want to have a real home where they can build a new life - a castle of their own.

UNHCR strives to find durable solutions for them. In 2008, almost 2 million refugees and internally displaced people were able to go back home and some 65,548 departed to 26 resettlement countries. Moreover, UNHCR estimates that around 1.1 million refugees have been granted citizenship in their country of asylum over the past decade.

On World Refugee Day, UNHCR recognized the strength and resolve of forcibly uprooted people and reaffirms its commitment to protect and find solutions for them.