UNHCR 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. Today, a staff of around 6,540 people in 116 countries continues to help 19.2 million persons.

In this issue, we focus on UNHCR's successful activities in the following 3 countries: Afghanistan, Liberia and Somalia.

Thanks to your support more and more Afghan refugees are returning home from Pakistan and Iran. Many people are taking up our offer of transport, food, money and help with finding and building shelter – some going home after more than two decades in exile. An estimated 400,000 Afghan refugees are expected to return home this year with our help. Until recently, harsh winter weather was preventing travel. Early in March, before temperatures rose, heavy snow and rain destroyed the mud-built houses of thousands of Afghans camped at Malgagai in western Pakistan. The UN Refugee Agency immediately made an urgent delivery of 800 tents, providing vital shelter until the warmer weather arrived.

Following peace agreements last year, more than 10,000 people who fled Liberia’s brutal civil conflict for neighbouring countries have been able to return in recent months – thanks to UN Refugee Agency help and kind support from donors.The former refugees, travelling from Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, are receiving food, household goods and tools to help them rebuild their lives.A massive and wideranging program involving around 1,000 community projects is in place for the returnees, who may total some 340,000 over the next three years.

Improved water supplies, provided by the UN Refugee Agency and our partners, are making it possible for thousands of people to travel home to an area in northwest Somalia that had become uninhabitable due to lack of water.We have re-drilled five boreholes in the Zeila District, restoring water sources destroyed during the civil war – a conflict which between 1989 and 1990 pushed most of the local population into Ethiopia and Djibouti. Around one million people have made the journey back to Somalia and the UN Refugee Agency has been able to assist half of them.

World Refugee Day

World Refugee Day, our annual day for raising awareness of refugee issues around the globe, will take place on June 20th. This year we focus on the courage of people we encounter in our work, every day.

As ordinary people living peaceful lives, we rarely have to put our courage to the test. Refugees are ordinary people, too, who through no fault of their own find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. As such, they are often required to dig deep into their own inner sources of strength to overcome their worst fears. Surviving a crisis like this takes exceptional resilience. Making the most of things – and carving out a new life against daunting odds – takes incredible determination.

Initially, that fear may be the immediate one of trying to escape the horrors of war and persecution, the pain of losing homes and loved ones, and the ordeals of flight. Later comes the deeper anxiety of uncertainty about rebuilding their lives.

It goes without saying that refugees deserve our help. Perhaps it should be said more often that they deserve our heartfelt respect, too.

To find out how you can get involved in World Refugee Day – and support our work around the globe – please contact us at:

UNHCR Canada
280 Albert Street, Suite 401
Ottawa, Ontario, K1P 5G8

Tel.: 1-877-232-0909
Fax: 1-613-230-1855
Email: withyou@unhcr.ca
Website: www.unhcr.ca.