While our Emergency Response Team is there to help people survive an immediate humanitarian crisis, the rest of our work focuses on assisting refugees build a new life. Here are just a few examples of how we are helping people to start again.

In this issue, we focus on UNHCR's successful activities in the following 3 countries: Colombia, Burundi, Somolia, and China.

Along Colombia’s Guaviare river armed militia have forced many villagers, who are minority indigenous people, to leave their traditional lands. In April of this year, UNHCR staff were part of a humanitarian mission to bring emergency aid to this area. They distributed hygiene kits and food rations and with the help of local authorities, are starting projects: for example, a school restaurant and welfare programs for the elderly to encourage the indigenous tribes to stay in their villages. With some 2.4 million Colombians having registered as victims of forced internal displacement, the country now has one of the largest populations in need of UNHCR assistance in the world.
Read the full story on the UNHCR International site.

Melchior Bavumiragiye is one of some 389 thousand refugees from Burundi who have returned home from camps in Tanzania. He received financial assistance from UNHCR to move his ten-member family back to his ruined village. "When I arrived in my village, my house was in ruins. I had to replace the doors and windows and repair the leaking roof," he said. "I am using part of the financial allocation for these repairs. I will use the rest to buy a small plot of land for farming and to start a small business at the market." More than 300,000 refugees in Tanzanian camps have received assistance of various kinds from UNHCR permitting them to go back. Another 89,000 Burundian refugees have returned on their own. The 300,000 mark is a significant milestone in our efforts to find a lasting solution for long term refugee situations in Africa.
Read the full story on the UNHCR International site

Somalia has been devastated by civil war for 17 years and is considered one of the worst humanitarian crisis spots in the world. The UN Refugee Agency has distributed aid recently to about 40,000 internally displaced people living in 50 settlements west of the volatile capital of Somalia, Mogadishu. The aid was targeted to the most vulnerable families, who have recently fled the fighting. A small ray of hope in these crowded settlements comes from a new Agency project to teach women, mostly widows, how to raise chickens. They will each receive 20 egg-laying hens and can earn a small income through the sale of eggs.
Read the full story on the UNHCR International site.

The earthquake that devastated southern China’s Sichuan province on May 12 left an estimated 5 million people homeless. UNHCR has supplied 11,000 tents to provide shelter for about 55,000 people, in response to a call from the Chinese government.
Read the full story on the UNHCR International site.