Working in Partnership - UNHCR Israel

UNHCR has been working globally with non-governmental organizations since it first began helping the forcibly displaced in the early 1950s, when about 100 national and international "voluntary societies" were assisting refugees from World War II in Europe.

In the early years, UNHCR´s focus was primarily legal and not operational. It relied heavily on governments and established NGOs for help and funding. By the early 1990s, UNHCR recognized that the magnitude of global challenges exceeded its own capacity to respond. Given the growing needs of those of concern to UNHCR, a framework for cooperation was established between UNHCR and the hundreds of NGOs around the world with whom it works.

Since 2008, the UNHCR office in Israel works closely with several local non-governmental organizations that have a special focus on asylum seekers and refugees. Today, UNHCR relies on these organizations to implement a wide range of projects, including aid distribution, legal protection, workers’ rights, advocacy, healthcare, psychosocial support, nutrition, childcare, gender related issues, rehabilitation and adult education projects. The development of strong partnerships with more and more national NGOs therefore has been a central feature of recent years.

We present below some of the organizations with which UNHCR has been working closely in pursuit of its protection and solution objectives: