Word: unhcr
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...boundaries of old Yugoslavia. An additional 250,000 have sought sanctuary, mostly in Western Europe; tens of thousands more have probably slipped over borders illegally to stay with relatives. Already the largest forced movement of Europeans since World War II, this flood may be just the beginning. The UNHCR fears that if the fighting in Bosnia is compounded by an eruption of hostilities in Kosovo, yet another ethnically divided territory about to explode, the number of people in flight could rapidly escalate to 3 million...
...food shortages hardly approach the crisis in Somalia, but for people accustomed to a steady diet, the diminishing supply is a hardship. "On even days we have beans," says Vladimir Pozek, a software analyst in Sarajevo. "On odd days, macaroni." Little relief is in sight. Both the UNHCR and the Red Cross suspended operations in Bosnia two weeks ago after workers were repeatedly threatened and a Red Cross official was killed while leading a convoy of goods...
Stopping in Cyprus on his way home to England, a Palestinian traveler fell into conversation with the distraught Ahmed and alerted the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in London of Ahmed's plight. Ahmed was soon assured by UNHCR that he would receive assistance in Cairo, so he flew back to Egypt. But when the Egyptians tried to send him to Somalia, Ahmed kicked and screamed. The Somalian Ambassador was called in, and he acknowledged that Ahmed would be imprisoned if he landed in Somalia. So the Ethiopian was returned to Cyprus...
Despite some reports that the Kirghiz had not been declared refugees by the UNHCR--the state department uses the commissioner's decision to fit groups under its own refugee heading--officials with the UNHCR in Geneva and with the Pakistani Embassy in Washington say the Kirghiz are indeed refugees, part of the whole body of people fleeing to Pakistan to escape the fighting in Afghanistan...
...REFUGEE, according to both the UNHCR and the Refugee Act, is someone who lives outside his own country and unwilling to return home either because he was persecuted there or because he has a well-founded fear of persecution upon return. Every year the president and the Congress agree on ceilings for the number of refugees that can be admitted from any one part of the world. In 1982, for example, the ceilings limit entries from the entire region termed the Near East to 5000 people. Most of them, Lynch says, will be Afghan refugees...