Word: unhcr
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Iraq. From October 1980, to September 1981, more than 3000 refugees from Afghanistan and Iraq--the majority from Afghanistan--were admitted to the United States. The Bureau of Refugee Affairs, Lynch says, has been using the definition of refugee set by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which was incorporated into the Refugee Act approved by Congress...
Nguyen Phuong Thuy is not alone. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), women on 81 % of the boats reaching Thailand in the first nine months of 1981 were raped, most of them many times over. A total of 552 were attacked in front of their relatives; another 200 were carried off to other fishing vessels. The attackers, many of them carriers of venereal diseases, often left the women infected as well as brutalized. Many victims became pregnant. A report to the relief agency CARE by a doctor who worked at the Songkhla camp...
...aging coast guard cutter. After some success against the pirates, Bangkok asked the U.S. for another $1.3 million in June. The Reagan Administration countered with an offer of $600,000. Thai officials said the funds were insufficient and the program died. This week Bangkok will study a proposal by UNHCR and the International Committee of the Red Cross that concerned nations contribute $3.7 million for an antipiracy campaign...
Quarreling among top agency officials sometimes slows down operations. As a result, the UNHCR'S chief of mission in Pakistan, Roman Kohaut, is retiring in disgust. "I'm fed up with the mess in Geneva," Kohaut told TIME'S Wibo Vandelinde last month. "UNHCR resembles a delicatessen that has grown into a huge supermarket but has never adapted its management. Geneva refuses to listen to urgent advice from the field...
Perhaps more serious is the criticism by some independent relief agencies that UNHCR is not aggressive enough in protecting refugees in the countries to which they have fled. "UNHCR is the hostage of the host countries," says one top relief official. "The agency is much too timid about protecting, let alone acting upon flagrant violations of the refugees' rights." Among such violations: Thailand's return of 60,000 Cambodians to famine-struck Kampuchea in 1979, though most flooded back within days, and Hong Kong's repatriation of 10,000 Chinese who escaped from mainland China...