The Importance Of Refugees

In our current setting, the presence of refugees are prevalent in different parts of the world. A refugee is defined as someone who has been forced to leave a country because of war or for religious or political reasons. On the one hand, international legal protection of refugees centres on a person laid down in the 1951 Refugee Convention under Article 1(A)2, the term “refugee” shall apply to any person who “ x x x owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality

About 80 percent of the world’s refugees are from developing countries. Most of them seek asylum in other developing countries and half live in urban areas. Refugees tend to settle in urban areas for a number of reasons. This includes that the legal facilities available to asylum-seekers—including lawyers, consulates, and diplomats—are often clustered in cities. Non-governmental organizations, such as religious groups, can respond to refugees more quickly in urban areas and most importantly is the community of other immigrants in

Due to this, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was created in 1951 to assist in the international protection of refugees. The organization’s primary objective is to ensure that all persons can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another state, and to return home voluntarily. One of the agency’s pressing tasks is to encourage governments to adopt fair and flexible processes to promote just and effective refugee law. When UNHCR was first established, material aspects of refugee relief like providing houses and food were seen to be the responsibility of the government that had granted asylum. As many of the world’s more recent major refugee flows have occurred in less developed countries, however, UNHCR has acquired the additional role of coordinating material assistance for refugees and returnees. Although this was not UNHCR's original mandate, coordination of material assistance has become one of its principal functions alongside protection and the promotion of