United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was established on December 14, 1950 by the United Nations General Assembly. The agency is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees.

It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country.

In more than five decades, the agency has helped an estimated 50 million people restart their lives. Today, a staff of around 6,300 people in more than 110 countries continues to help 32.9 million persons.
 

ninemillion.org

ninemillion.org is a UNHCR led campaign, which aims to give more than nine million of the most vulnerable refugee children access to education, sport and technology by 2010. The campaign uses the term, 'Education (plus),' to more fully describe the programs that UNHCR funds, designs, and implements to help refugee children. Education (plus) considers all of the barriers that children face when trying to gain an education.

This means that programs implemented through ninemillion.org provide more than just schoolrooms and books. They also provide separated latrines so that girls can attend classes, they consider the needs of the family so that girls are not required to fetch firewood or mind younger siblings when they should be in school and they focus on the sustainability of programs, ensuring that the longer term requirements of the programs are included in budgets. The inclusion of sport in these programs is groundbreaking. UNHCR is the lead humanitarian agency providing this vital element of any child's education to the worlds' most vulnerable young people.

IOMC is proud to be promoting UNHCR invaluable mission and its ninemillion.org campaign.

www.ninemillion.org