Pledging Conference: UNHCR launches 2007 budget appeal

On Monday, we will present our budget of US$1.06 billion for 2007 to donor countries at the annual pledging conference in Geneva and hope for a generous response. A billion dollars sounds like a lot of money but it is equivalent to just a dollar a week for each of the 21 million people we help. Most of our funding comes from a small number of donors and we would like to see more countries contributing and digging deeper into their pockets.

The largest programmes for 2007 are Chad ($69 million), Afghanistan ($52 million), Liberia ($32 million), Kenya ($32 million) and Tanzania ($24.3 million).

The funds are needed to assist approximately 21 million people of concern to UNHCR around the world including some 8.6 million refugees, 6.6 million internally displaced persons, some 1.6 million returnees, 770,000 asylum seekers and 2.3 million stateless people.

The 2007 budget programme of US$1.06 billion compares to $1.15 billion the previous year.