Protection and assistance
Protection and assistance
UNHCR advocates and works with governments to ensure displaced and stateless people can access these rights.
Working to ensure people forced to flee and those denied a nationality can access their human rights
Citizens normally look to their own governments to guarantee their human rights and physical security.
When people are forced to flee, it is often because they can no longer rely on their government to protect them – or because their own government is persecuting them.
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, works to ensure that displaced and stateless people can access their rights, including the right to seek safety, the right to health care and the right to a nationality.
We monitor, advise and support governments as they draft legislation and regulations and help train lawyers and judges. Bringing about positive changes on national, regional and global levels can take years, but we accomplish it with the help of lawyers, judges, civil society organizations, politicians and students.
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Providing shelter
The most immediate need in a displacement crisis is often safe, suitable shelter. We deliver life-saving tents, plastic sheeting and bedding so people exhausted from a long and often dangerous journey can sleep indoors, where they feel safer and are protected from harsh weather.
We help find safe places for refugees to settle, and while we are not in favour of creating camps, where there is no alternative, we will set up and help manage them, and try to ensure they are properly designed to protect the environment and help prevent outbreaks of disease.
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Safeguarding individuals
We register and document people on the move and are on the lookout for the most vulnerable among them, such as children on their own, or people who have survived torture or sexual and gender-based violence. We help ensure they can access the extra protection and specialized care they need.
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Cash instead of rations
Where appropriate, UNHCR uses cash transfers or vouchers instead of food rations so displaced people can buy food, goods and services in the same way as the local community. This helps them access the items they need in a dignified manner and supports local economies. It is also cost-effective, allowing us to reach and support more people.
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Access to health care
Good health is an essential requirement for refugees to be able to rebuild their lives. UNHCR works with governments and partners to provide emergency health care, improve local health services, accessed by refugees and host communities, and advocate for refugees to be included in national health systems and plans.
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Strengthening laws
We advocate for and work with governments to change laws and practices to better protect displaced people, creating change on national, regional, and global levels. This helps ensure refugees, asylum-seekers and other forcibly displaced persons can access support, get documents, go to school, work and exercise other rights.
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Ending statelessness
We also work to secure nationality for people who are stateless by changing laws and practices. One of the most important ways to achieve this is through nationality laws that allow children to become citizens of the country where they were born if they would otherwise be stateless. Birth registration is also critical. Likewise, we make sure people do not lose their nationality through changes to laws or when countries.
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Advice on mixed-migration movements
We also engage with and advise on broader and mixed-migration issues that affect refugees asylum-seekers, internally displaced people and stateless people, along with migrants and other people on the move, such human trafficking and protection at sea.
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