The core functions of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), headed by Mrs. Sadako Ogata, are those assigned by its 1950 statute: providing international protection to refugees and seeking permanent solutions to their problems. As part of its duty to ensure that voluntary repatriation schemes are sustainable, UNHCR has also become involved in assisting and protecting returnees in their home countries. In recent years, the General Assembly and the Secretary-General have called with increasing frequency on UNHCR to protect or assist particular groups of internally displaced people who have not crossed an international border but are in a refugee-like situation inside their countries of origin, as well as other populations affected by conflict.
The genocide in Rwanda and the flight last year of over 2 million Rwandan nationals into neighbouring countries in the Great Lakes region of Africa was one of the darkest episodes in recent history and one that posed an unprecedented challenge for UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies. Other regions, including the former Yugoslavia, south-west Asia, the Horn of Africa and parts of western Africa, have also continued to suffer from massive population displacements, while a major new crisis erupted in the northern Caucasus in December 1994.
Although the refugee population worldwide had decreased to 14.5 million by the beginning of this year because of repatriation solutions in various parts of the world, the total number of people of concern to UNHCR had risen to some 27.4 million. This included 5.4 million internally displaced persons, 3.5 million others of humanitarian concern, predominantly populations affected by conflict, and some 4 million returnees requiring assistance to re-establish sustainable reintegration in their countries of origin. In 1994, UNHCR provided material assistance to a total of 17.6 million people, as compared to 13.8 million in 1993. This included 8.9 million in Africa, 5 million in Asia, 3.5 million in Europe and 115,000 in Latin America.
The present period of volatility and readjustment in world affairs has been characterized by increasing levels of human displacement. In the face of this reality, UNHCR has continued to hone its emergency response capacity and to pursue preventive and solution-oriented approaches. It has aimed to assure a high level of emergency preparedness, to provide assistance and protection in such a way as to avert, where possible, the occurrence of new refugee flows and to promote concerted efforts to achieve durable solutions, notably voluntary repatriation. In so doing, it has collaborated increasingly closely with political, peace-keeping and development initiatives and organs of the United Nations, with other intergovernmental and regional bodies and with a wide range of non-governmental organizations.
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