Refugees from the south-east of Ukraine, forced to flee their homes and start new life in Russia, talked about what they had to endure in their homeland.
Elena Fedorovna with her grandchildren Diana and Seryozha live in Rostov-on-Don in a refugee shelter, which was organized by a local philanthropist. The mother of the children died, the father left the family. Serezha and Diana have no one but their grandmother. She tells reporters how she ended up in Russia, she tells not for the first time, but every time - with tears.
“We are from Pervomaisk, Luhansk region, our city is now completely destroyed. Militiamen brought us to Rostov-on-Don with our 4-year-old granddaughter and a wounded grandson...
... it was July 28th. They started bombing at 4 am. For 3-4 hours everything was bombed - houses, schools, kindergartens, temples. My boy, my grandson, was wounded by a shell fragment. The neighbors hid in the basement, I left my granddaughter with the neighbors and ran with the wounded Serezha in my arms to the hospital, ran 12 kilometers. When he was operated on and he began to recover from anesthesia, I asked the doctor to leave him in the hospital, and I myself ran back again, for my granddaughter. I didn’t see anything, I didn’t feel it - I had to run, save the girl, and I ran.
The militias at some post did not let me through, I begged: “I have a child there, in the basement.” They told me: “Look for your granddaughter in other places, that basement was bombed, people ran away from there.” But I felt that she was there! There I found her. The baby stood for eight hours, hiding behind the boards, shaking with fear. I grabbed her, we sat on the steps for a while, and then we ran with her back 12 kilometers under bombardment to the hospital where Seryozha was.
Then the militias started shouting to us that the hospital was about to be bombed, they quickly put us on a bus, where there were women and children, and we drove off. The militia marched in front of and behind the bus. We drove off, probably 50 kilometers, and then the bus was stopped: a plane appeared above us, we jumped out, lay down on the ground. The kids are so smart: no one taught them, but they were the first to jump into the grass and hid. Serezha was in my arms. Dianochka cries, asks for water, her grandson has a fever. The plane flew very low over us...
I don’t know by what fate, but we drove up to the border. We were immediately settled in a tent camp. That's how we ended up in Russia. Good people they helped us raise money so that Serezha would be paid plastic surgery. He can already breathe on his own - a fragment from a shell went through his entire face, from one cheek to the other, through his nose, damaged the nasal septum, and another fragment in his head ... "
We met Anna at the TAP (temporary accommodation facility) on the territory children's camp"Youth" near Belgorod. She and her husband made the decision to leave for the sake of the children, so that they would not have to see what war is.
“We lived near Mariupol, in the Volodarsky district. There are no hostilities there yet, but from Zaporozhye constantly comes military equipment. And, you know, my heart bleeds when little children see a falling star and make a wish: “To no longer drive tanks.”
We have the same problems as most refugees. At home, my daughter went to first grade, but now, until the documents are done, we cannot send her to school, she skips school. I myself study with her, teach her to read and count, I hope she will be able to pass the exam and go to the second grade. So many children are left for the second year, they do not cope, and school programs in Russia and Ukraine are very different. My son does not go to school yet, he is 5 years old.
We will soon be sent from this TAP under the resettlement program to Nizhny Novgorod. My husband and I ordinary people We do not understand politics and will never understand who needed this war. Only it is very bitter that they did not let us live in peace, that we had to leave our home.
My husband's mother stayed there, she suffered a stroke 1.5 years ago. She is recumbent, all Right side body paralyzed. She is cared for by her husband's older sister. Pensions are still paid there, but these are mere pennies - her pension is not enough for two packs of diapers, which need to be changed in the morning and evening. After buying diapers, 80 hryvnias remain from this pension, and 860 hryvnias are still needed for medicines. We can buy only half of the list of medicines that the doctor prescribed for her - only life-saving. There is simply no money for vitamins.
We, like many others, left because of the children, so that they would not see the war, would not see this whole nightmare, would not fall into the “cauldron”, as in the same Debaltseve. We lived together with my husband for almost nine years, and moved to Russia with two bags of things - we couldn’t take anything with us, and how can you transport it if you don’t even know where you are going? We put our whole lives in two bags and drove off.”
A young couple joins the conversation - Evgenia and Denis, both from Dimitrov, Donetsk region. There are no hostilities in Dimitrov itself, just as there are no prospects for young people, they say.
“Mom is 62 years old - such an age that it is psychologically and physically difficult to move somewhere, so she stayed. I hope that over time it will be possible to persuade her to move to Russia, - Evgenia shares. - We left because there is no work for us in Dimitrov.
The attitude towards people at home is simply terrible. We have a mining town, two mines were simply closed, only one remained, and at the time when we left, the miners had not been paid their salaries for the fifth month. And our men have nowhere else to earn. There is still a meat processing plant in Dimitrov, but if you translate the salary to the current rate, you can earn about 5-6 thousand rubles a month. How to live on this money? Our prices are high right now. While we lived there, I worked as a shop assistant, and Denis worked in a mine for 7 years.
Now we are processing the last documents, one of these days we will leave under the resettlement program for Samara. Our friends from Dimitrov have already moved there, got a job at a ceramic factory. They say there are vacancies. Even if the situation changes, we do not want to go back, we want to take root here. We do not link our future with Ukraine.”
In the Rostov and Belgorod regions, the Russian Orthodox Church and American philanthropists. By blessing His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, since April, a large inter-Christian humanitarian project of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate has been implemented in these border areas, charitable organization Samaritan's Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelical Association.
In total, from April to June, about 30,000 refugees received humanitarian assistance under the project. More than 58,000 individual kits have been distributed - hygiene items, bed linen and towels, baby diapers and long-term storage food.
In the near future, another 10 thousand sets for children will be formed and distributed: Stuffed Toys, educational games and manuals, school supplies.
Crossing the border of the DPRK by a resident of the country is a crime punishable by imprisonment in a labor camp. The term may not be life, but the conditions in prison lead to the fact that people die from disease, exhaustion and hunger.
Despite the risk, tens of thousands of North Koreans are trying to flee for loved ones and a better future. Few succeed in this, even fewer want to remember the horrors they experienced.
Death camp boy
Shin In Geun learned from childhood what songbun is - caste system North Korea. His mother was a woman who made an unsuccessful escape and went to prison for this, where In Geun was born. So she fell into the class of "enemies of the people", which was inherited by her son, and in the future would be passed on to her grandson. But life decreed otherwise.
Mother and older brother planned an escape, and the child learned by the system decided that it would be right to inform them. His relatives were shot, and he was tortured for two weeks to find out the names of his accomplices. At the age of sixteen, In Geun became friends with another prisoner, and they decided to escape.
The cellmate died, killed by an electric shock on the barbed wire around the camp, and In Geun continued on his way alone.
He walked 580 km to the Chinese border. There were 90s when the country was dying of hunger, so for small bribes, border guards could release a person to work in China or Russia. However, In Geun decided to run away for good. He moved to China, and from there, by a lucky coincidence, to the United States. There he wrote a book of memoirs and became famous throughout America.
However, life away from his native culture was unbearable, and he decided to return - but not to North Korea, but to South. He changed his name, got a job and began to lead a solitary life. He could not start a family - his childhood and youth spent in the camp killed his ability to love. Journalists who spoke with him claim that he cannot laugh.
Girls and military service
Lee So Yeon volunteered to join the army in the 90s when famine was rampant in the country. The service lasted seven years, which she still sees in nightmares. The only advantage of the army position was regular food, but not in the quantities that one could get enough of.
The girls served on the same principles as the men. Their drill and combat training lasted two hours a day less than that of the male soldiers, but it was supplemented by household duties: cleaning and cooking, from which the men were exempted.
The girls lived in barracks, 20 people in a room. They had no running water, so personal hygiene was difficult. From heavy workloads and malnutrition, many stopped menstruating, but in difficult conditions it even pleased the girl soldiers.
Seo Yeon confirms that sexual violence is common in the military. She herself managed to avoid this fate, but the cases when senior men harassed conscripts were widespread. They were not allowed to have children, and girls were forced to have abortions.
So-yeon made her first attempt to escape immediately after the end of her service: the disappointment in the country was too great. The escape failed - she was caught and sent to prison for a year. For the second time, we managed to negotiate with Chinese border guards and agents who helped get to South Korea. There she told her story to BBC journalists.
The rich run too
Tae Yong-ho is the former Deputy Ambassador of the DPRK to the UK. Occupying such a high position, he was under the 24-hour supervision of the special services, which were supposed to monitor the movements and the level of loyalty.
How he managed to get rid of their attention, Yong Ho does not tell - he fears for the lives of those who helped.
He gave an open interview to international journalists in which he promised to fight for the rights of the people in North Korea. The former diplomat said that even the elite in the country began to live much harder after Kim Jong-un came to power. Control increased, spies began to be assigned to politicians and ministers, and the number of false denunciations increased.
Yong-ho says he worries about colleagues and friends who stayed in North Korea and could have suffered because of his escape. They have no way to contact, but the former diplomat hopes that sooner or later the situation will stabilize, and people will no longer need to worry about their own lives.
How I Surrendered My Sister A Refugee's Tale
Today I was clearing computer space and found a once saved file. The site itself, on which this material is published, contains very outdated information on refugees. It’s even somehow embarrassing .. because someone will read it and think that to this day it’s like that. Therefore, I will not recommend it for review, especially since the company advertises the citizenship of Ecuador (?), But the story is wonderful. It's outdated too! But, there is a sound grain and storytelling skill in it. Read with interest. The author, unfortunately, is not known. Grammar and punctuation are preserved, the source is indicated in the conclusion.
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The center for displaced persons was located outside the city and consisted of several houses with two-room apartments, in which family refugees were located, and dormitories, where single refugees lived several people in a room. Also nearby was the office of the Social Service (the holy of holies), where all domestic issues were resolved during the long wait for a decision. A spacious apartment with a kitchen and a bathroom hurt my soul, because by Dutch standards a bath is already a luxury. Appliances was also much more modern than in my apartment in The Hague. In general, I want to note that Finland is in many ways much more modern than other countries.
Behind the house big forest, in which refugees gathered blueberries, lingonberries for sale and just for themselves. I have never seen so many mushrooms and berries in my life! Walking through the forest, I had the feeling that I was in some kind of fairy tale. I saw a lot of wild animals - whose names I can't even remember. In addition, I ate so many blueberries and raspberries that I would hardly have wanted them before next summer (next year I want to go in June, on the day of the solstice, when there is actually no night - such a cliché for a tourist).
Very quickly we found new friends among compatriots and not only. In the Center, virtually all the republics of the once vast homeland were represented, who were waiting for one thing - permanent residence. And the longer they waited, the more they wanted to get permanent residence. Examples of those who received permanent residence (and all the rights like Finnish citizens, and after 5 years a Finnish passport) did not let anyone sleep. I remembered that the same thing happened to me. Everyone wanted to live normally, with permanent residence and in their apartment like everyone around, they wanted it like nothing else. Sometimes I couldn't sleep at night imagining my future in the Netherlands. And waited. Therefore, I understood well everyone who wanted the same in Finland. What difference does it make, what country! If the country is normal, with a normal economy and human rights, then you can live in it and this is a completely normal desire, so I strictly ordered my relatives not to listen to anyone, remember that nothing comes easy, everything needs to be done right, learn to wait. And never pay attention to refugees from other CIS countries, because everyone is perfect different legends and reasons for fleeing. All this is individual. All this is classical and there is no difference where to apply for refugee status - in Finland or Holland. I saw the same groups of refugees as in other countries (what I saw and heard was confirmed - Jews receive permanent residence, national minorities from Central Asia, sexual minorities, deserters). I could only sympathize with the families who requested asylum as Jehovah's Witnesses from Russia or Baptists from Ukraine. Nowhere, even in Romania, this category will be granted asylum, since everyone knows that now this category of people is not in mortal danger. For everyone else, with knowledge of the matter and experience, you can still concoct something worthwhile. The recently passed law on a one-week trial deals mainly with Roma from Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, who have flocked to Finland by the thousands. Everyone else can rest easy for now.
School time approached and I even felt a little sad, I also wanted to go to school somewhere inside, find out and study my new home. Although, to be honest, having studied Dutch, I no longer have the strength or desire to learn other languages.
My sister's family ended up in that part of Finland where the majority live Swedes and the children will have to learn Finnish and Swedish(two state languages in the country), adults can first choose - Swedish or Finnish. Considering that Swedish is easier and there is some similarity with German, my sister and her husband chose Swedish, while the children started with Finnish. Finnish, of course, is a very difficult language grammatically, but I really liked the sound - it sounds very funny. And in order not to learn Kazakh, they would have learned both Finnish and Swedish and Norwegian combined. Once a week they had work on the computer. The library also has free internet available to everyone. Here are the backyards of Europe! I know that in many countries refugees live in tents, and the Internet is out of the question. In the same Holland, this will not happen for a long time, and maybe never.
There was no limit to my surprise when I met Jews from Ukraine who had recently received asylum and, accordingly, an apartment and all rights local residents(except for the right to vote). Involuntarily, I began to compare with Holland. And what happened - in Finland the standard is much higher. The first thing that catches your eye, when you get an apartment, there is a free sauna, an Electrolux refrigerator with a huge freezer, parquet floors, an electric stove. All this in Holland you need to buy yourself. Further, the entrances are obscenely well-groomed, in Holland this can only be seen in private houses. There can be no comparisons with Russia - the 19th and 21st centuries. And all this is available to everyone. In addition, after receiving permanent residence, refugees participate in various programs for learning the language, profession and integration into society. Naturally - for free.
I left satisfied - Mission impossible was completed, they will no longer be able to send them out, the procedures last for a long time - they will last 3 years, and even with children they will be given status on humanitarian grounds, where they will go, that's how it was. It has already become its own separate branch of the economy and society with its own Ministry and thousands of jobs for the Finns too.
The KLM plane silently touched down on Dutch soil and I felt at home. Still, visiting is good, but home is better! In the Netherlands, it is difficult, of course, when starting the asylum procedure. Holland is the sweetest country - I did not doubt it, but still, in terms of social benefits, Scandinavia is not surpassed! How to get permanent residence - for everyone different ways, different abilities and abilities. But Europe is one and already without borders, having one of the EU passports you can live and work wherever you want. The main thing is not to sit still, but to try and dare.
Someone saved their beloved cat, and someone was persuaded to leave by their mother-in-law
The daily bombings, the death of loved ones, the lack of water, food and light are a thing of the past for thousands of refugees who arrived in Rostov region from Ukraine. Some of them find shelter with relatives, some ran away from civil war into the unknown.
About what is really happening in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, told the refugees who arrived three days ago in a tent camp located in the farm Stepanov Matveyevo-Kurgan district, which is seven kilometers from the Russian-Ukrainian border.
Every day people come to the camp, and everyone has their own story. Most of the time it's tragic.
We leave for the camp from Rostov airport at 08:30. The helicopter of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia makes several flights a day according to requests from temporary accommodation points. By the way, initially the helicopter crew did not want to take the journalist. After all, this is a whole place (!) Which one of the refugees could have taken on the way back.
The flight lasts a little over half an hour. When the car sits down and the engine stops, curious kids run up to the helicopter. They ask permission to sit in the cockpit. The crew enjoys the tour. Adults do not approach the helicopter - they have already seen enough of the equipment that circled around the clock in the Ukrainian sky.
Seeing my camera, many people ask me to take them off and be sure to post the photos on the Internet.
“Maybe one of us will see us. He will see that it is peaceful here, the women vying with each other. — We were afraid to go to Russia. On Ukrainian television, we were assured that, having crossed the border, no one would need us. And what was our surprise when we were given new bedding and blankets in the camp. Those who ran away from home, leaving everything behind, are given personal hygiene products, clothes to change.
“When I grow up, I will definitely become a lifeguard,” says a boy of eight years old.
“Maybe the military?” the lifeguard asks.
- No never! the boy screams, his face contorted. The military kill people. The National Guard of Ukraine destroys everything in its path, and the rescuers do only good deeds.
Refugees come up to me every minute, mostly women with children. And everyone has their own story. The girl Ekaterina asks me to thank the rescuers on the pages of my publication.
Only when we arrived at the camp did we realize that we were safe. And there were moments when we mentally said goodbye to life. Our bus stopped at a Ukrainian gas station at night. A few minutes later, a jeep drove up to the bus, and thugs in bulletproof vests and with weapons got out of it. They were either drunk or on drugs. Obviously insane. They started yelling at us and saying that we were traitors to the motherland and that they would shoot us,” Ekaterina says with tears in her eyes.
She left her parents in Ukraine. And she, grabbing her daughter and small savings, rushed aimlessly. The girl has no relatives in Russia. What will happen to her next, she has no idea.
In a few days we are waiting for a bus that will take us to Samara region. There is some kind of sanatorium or camp. For us, the main thing is not to shoot. Now many refugees are having a hard time with money. We realized in time and exchanged hryvnias for rubles at the normal rate. And those who didn't say they have problems. Russian banks perceive our currency as simple pieces of paper. And if they change, then at a ridiculous rate, ”Ekaterina shared.
Larisa joins our conversation. She and her daughter fled from Kramatorsk. In Ukraine, she was left with an old mother and father who survived the Second World War.
— last week we slept on the floor. Quiet hours without shooting and bombing can be counted on the fingers. Ukrainian television does not show Kramatorsk and Slavyansk. It seems that these cities do not exist. Our houses are bombed, kindergartens and hospitals are destroyed. Soon Kramatorsk will be wiped off the face of the earth. It’s a matter of time,” Larisa said confidently.
The bus in which she was traveling was also stopped by drunken mercenaries. According to the woman, they were looking for men.
“Men are not allowed out of Ukraine at all. Many hide in dugouts. They can get to Russia only in a roundabout way. If a man is detained, then they are immediately taken to the National Guard. And if he refuses, then they shoot on the spot, - said terrible details Larisa.
I have heard many such stories throughout the day. The refugees told how the soldiers of the National Guard shoot at everyone indiscriminately. A funeral procession was shot the other day.
A boy drowned in the lake next to our house last week. The rescuer who arrived dived and immediately surfaced. He told us that besides the boy, there were thirty people at the bottom of the lake, and all of them had stones tied to their feet. Helicopters fly to this lake several times a week and drop people. I don't know if they are alive or not. I personally saw it,” said Olga, a refugee. She ran away from home with her 3-year-old daughter.
Ukrainians say that most likely they will never return home. There is simply nowhere to go back. My interlocutors claim that they are ready to work at any job in order to provide for their children. In which city they have to live, they don't care anymore. The main thing is not to see the war.
Today, a helicopter will take away 16 more refugees from the camp, including 5 children, two of whom are not yet six months old.
One married couple hugs a basket with a cat. This animal is now dearer to them than anything in the world. Previously, this cat never left the house, and now he has endured a journey of hundreds of kilometers. As the helicopter takes off, the cat begins to scream plaintively.
- Many wanted to take their pets with them to Russia, but the Ukrainian customs officers said firmly that they would not let them out without documents and vaccinations. And I had to leave cats and dogs at the checkpoint. They wander hungry, in whole flocks. Most likely, they will be killed soon, if they have not already been killed, - the woman says, crying.
Several other women are crying with her. One mother will have to overcome another thousand kilometers by train with three children. She will go to relatives in Khabarovsk. And what will happen next, only God knows.
Many tears and stories... However, not everyone wanted to go to Russia. Some, one might say, got here by accident.
“A couple of days ago we took refugees out of the camp near Donetsk. A very sad man was sitting at the very end of the bus. We started talking, and it turned out that the former mother-in-law asked to take her, his ex-wife and daughter to the border. However, some kind of scuffle began, and everyone ran indiscriminately to Russia. But he was not allowed back to Ukraine. The man complained that now he, apparently, will have to live with his former mother-in-law, ex-wife and a child. And he doesn't want that! — told me another story during our flight.
Over the years, rescuers have seen a lot. But even these strong men admit that it is very difficult to look at the tears of children and women who have lost their loved ones every day.
Anastasia Bychenkova
”appeared after the First World War of 1914-18. to designate persons who left during the war endangered occupations or territories occupied by the enemy, or were expelled from these territories by order of military or civil authorities.
The concept of "refugee" has undergone some changes several times.
Initially, a group approach was used, according to which a refugee was considered a person who was outside his country of origin and did not benefit from the protection of that State.
In 1926 refugees were recognized as persons of the respective national or ethnic background who do not enjoy the protection of their government and have not acquired another citizenship ( final act Conference on the Problems of Russian and Armenian Refugees in Geneva).
The most general and universally applicable definition of the term "refugee" is contained in the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, as amended by a 1967 protocol. According to it, "a refugee is a person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion is outside the country of his nationality and is unable to enjoy the protection of that country or is unwilling to enjoy such protection owing to such fear; or, having no particular nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable and unwilling to return to it owing to such fear.”
Main legal documents on the status of refugees are the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol.
Both documents are universal, now they are in total ratified by 145 states (including Russia in 1993) and incorporated into national law.
There are also regional conventions on refugees that significantly expand this concept: the 1969 Convention on Refugees in Africa, the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees in Latin America, as well as a number of conventions of the Council of Europe.
Number of refugees
There are 9.2 million refugees in the world today. But total number There are many more people under the protection of the UN Refugee Agency - refugees, internally displaced persons, asylum seekers, returnees. According to the United Nations (as of June 2006), there are a total of about 20 million refugees, displaced persons and stateless persons in 117 countries around the world. Many of them have been living in internal refugee camps for years.
From the history.
Refugees as a phenomenon have been known since time immemorial. The first refugees, as the story goes, appeared in 695 BC, when the Assyrian army of King Sennacherib I entered the lands of Judea. Then about 50,000 Jews hurriedly left their homes, rushing to Egypt, where they were also not expected.
In 375 (already AD), about 300,000 people fled from the invasion of the nomadic Huns to the lands of Rome.
In the 8th-9th centuries, as a result of the devastating Viking invasions of Britain, about 40,000 islanders moved to France, founded temporary settlements, and remained there, mingling with the local population.
A huge number of refugees appeared after the First crusade(1096-1099), when 500,000 Arabs and Turks fled from the places captured by the knights.
In 1492, all Jews who had not converted to Christianity were expelled from Spain, of which more than 200,000 took refuge in North Africa and other lands.
In the first half of the XIII century, when the Mongol hordes passed from Pacific Ocean before mediterranean sea, many hundreds of thousands of Chinese, Arabs, Russians, Persians, Poles, Hungarians fled to neighboring countries to escape the invasion there.
Refugees came not only from wars. During frequent plague epidemics, the population of cities and entire regions in Europe and Asia left for different countries to ride out the worst of times.
Some rulers used the refugees for their own purposes. So, due to the fact that in 1715 the King of Prussia Frederick II declared free entry and residence for "refugees of any religion", the population of the kingdom increased significantly. Many Russian Molokans, Baptists, Old Believers moved to Turkey, which accepted Christians who were members of any sects banned in their homeland, who had to take part in its wars for the right to live in the Ottoman Empire.
The practice of hiding behind church walls existed in biblical times when Roman law allowed churches to shelter even criminals within their walls.
In the Middle Ages in Europe, the right of asylum in churches was almost universally recognized. However, it only applied to criminals.
The practice of sheltering in temples began in 1983 in Canada, when a Montreal church hosted a refugee from Guatemala who was about to be deported. Since then, hundreds of people have found shelter in churches challenging the deportation order. Some were able to prove their right to stay in Canada, while others were still expelled.
Under Canadian law, such a church shelter does not legally protect the people hiding there in any way. There are no laws protecting the custom of churches to hide citizens who are in danger of being expelled from the country. Canadian police only once showed up at the church - in Quebec in March 2004 - and arrested an Algerian hiding there. They handcuffed him right there. Was big scandal. Since then, the immigration authorities and the police have refrained from such visits.
In France, there is a law that allows the police to come to a church and arrest a person who has taken refuge there. In Britain and America, the police also do not hesitate to arrest people in temples.
Practically no one dealt with refugees until the beginning of the twentieth century, when the process of developing a system of international laws, conventions and rules began to protect refugees, who had the worst of it in the First and Second World Wars, when it suddenly became clear that when a dozen neighboring countries, then there seems to be nowhere to run.
It was at this time that the concept of “refugees” appeared in international law. In 1922, after the First World War, the League of Nations adopts the first agreement (supplemented by the agreements of 1924, 1926 and 1928) on the status of Russian and Armenian refugees. For the first time, the rights of refugees were defined, they received travel documents of a special type (Nansen passport, named after the polar explorer and the first High Commissioner of the League of Nations for Refugees Fritjorf Nansen).
Subsequently, the agreements were extended to cover all refugees from Turkey and Nazi Germany and culminated in the approval on July 28, 1951 by a special UN conference of the "Convention relating to the Status of Refugees", which is a key legal document which defines the concept of "refugees" and their rights, as well as the legal obligations of States in relation to refugees.
The problem of refugees in the 20th century became especially acute more than once: for example, as a result of the seizure of power by the Nazis in Germany and a number of other countries; US wars of aggression in Korea and Indochina, Israeli aggression against Arab countries and Palestine, the policies of dictatorial and racist regimes in southern Africa, Latin America and other parts of the world.
After the Second World War, within the framework of the United Nations, states began to cooperate to create an international legal system for the protection of refugees. The international community created the United Nations Relief and Recovery Administration (UNRRA) and the International Refugee Organization (IRF). UNRRA assisted in the voluntary repatriation of more than 7 million people, and the IPS assisted in the placement of 1.7 million European refugees who did not want to return to their homeland.
January 1, 1951 as an institute international protection To address the issue of refugees and displaced persons, the United Nations General Assembly established the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, replacing UNRRA and the MPS.
For the first time, the UNHCR had to work in an emergency humanitarian crisis during the Gulf War, following the exodus of 1.9 million Kurds.
The turning point in his work was former Yugoslavia: for the first time, the staff took an active part in organizing such large-scale actions as air bridges and humanitarian convoys.
In 1994, a humanitarian disaster occurred in Rwanda, when about a million people fled to neighboring Zaire in four days.
In early 1995, UNHCR was providing humanitarian assistance to displaced persons in Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Georgia and Tajikistan.
In 1999, UNHCR played an active role in providing humanitarian assistance to thousands of refugees affected by the Kosovo conflict.
Today UNHCR is one of the main humanitarian organizations in the world, providing assistance to 19.2 million people in 116 countries.
The number of its employees is more than 6,500 people. During its half-century of activity, UNHCR has provided assistance to at least 50 million people, for which it has twice been awarded Nobel Prize world - in 1954 and 1981.
In October 1992, UNHCR and Russia signed an Agreement to open a representative office in Moscow. Currently there are branches of the representative office in a number of regions of Russia. Since May 1995 Russia has been a member Executive Committee UNHCR.
On December 4, 2000, the 55th session of the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that, starting from 2001, June 20 will be celebrated annually as World Refugee Day.
