Politics & Practice of UNHCR Mandate
This is the core obligation of states in granting asylum.
What is non-refoulement?
The Statute says the High Commissioner acts under the authority of this body.
What is the General Assembly?
This is where many refugees/IDPs choose to live instead of refugee camps.
What are cities/urban areas?
This term describes people who are forced to leave their homes, but stay in their own country, and face major challenges because they are not considered traditional refugees.
What are internally displaced persons, or IDPs?
This person acts as the "public face" of UNHCR.
What is the High Comissioner?
UNHCR lists the three main durable solutions for refugees as repatriation to their home country, integration to host society, or this third option.
What is resettlement to a third country?
In this year the General Assembly ended the process of five year renewals and confirmed the UNHCR as a UN program until the Refugee problem is solved.
What is 2003?
This is the crisis that at the time of writing the UNHCR was trialing being involved with and have since become an integral part of the response to.
What is climate crisis/natural disaster?
The UNHCR risk losing this if it becomes too closely connected to powerful governments.
What is moral authority?
These four terms make up the “4Rs” developed by UNHCR.
What is repatriation, reintegration, rehabilitation, and reconstruction?
The 4 million registered Palestinian refugees in the Middle East do not fall under UNHCR mandate but rather this other UN agency.
What is UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)?
Grown from 25 members to 79, this body approves UNHCR’s budget and issues conclusions on protection, yet observers describe it as largely ceremonial and not substantive.
What is ExCom (The Executive Committee)?
This is the idea/norm that prevented UNHCR from having a hand in IDP situations until the early 90s.
What is sovereignty?
The book says UNHCR must understand this when working with governments and other countries.
What is politics?
UNHCR increasingly works with these organizations because it cannot respond to large-scale refugee crises by itself.
What are NGOs (non-governmental organizations)?
An increasing amount of donor funds to UNHCR have been subject to this stipulation which restricts how and where funds can be used.
What is earmarking?
Because refugee obligations only activate once a person reaches a territory or jurisdiction, Northern states use this regime, including visas, readmission agreements, and airport international zones, to avoid norms without breaching them.
What is the Travel Regime?
These are at least 3 of the new challenges the book identifies that UNHCR must face.
What are IDP, environmental displacement/natural disaster victims, urbanization/urban displacement, migration, failed/fragile states, regime expansion?
What are the two original goals of UNHCR?
What are protecting refugees and finding solutions?
This 1967 agreement removed the geographic and time limitations that had originally been included in the 1951 Refugee Convention.
What is the 1967 Protocol?
This term describes situations where refugees have been in exile for 5 years or more after their initial displacement without durable solutions.
What is protracted refugee situation (PRS)?
In December 1996, High commissioner Ogata took the Africa Bureau's advice over the protection division effectively condoning this.
What is the forced repatriation of Rwandan refugees from Tanzania?
Name a way in which, since this book has been published, we have seen any of these challenges listed in the chapter play out.
(Free response)
This problem arises when people are forced to leave their homes because of war, climate change, hunger, or bad governments, but do not always legally count as refugees.
What is a protection gap?
This comprises the norms, rules, principles, and decision-making procedures that regulate state behaviors
What is a regime?