There was such overwhelming interest in our Global Hack for Good on World Refugee Day – we could not accommodate all that wanted to participate! So we are announcing the old fashioned way – on Facebook and Twitter! First, the challenge: The number of forcibly displaced people around the worl...

HITSATS, Ethiopia, June 13 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency has opened a new camp in northern Ethiopia to house the increasing number of Eritrean refugees entering the country. A total 776 Eritrean refugees have already been transferred to Hitsats Camp, which can house up to 20,000 refugees. "This...

Like two other refugee locations in Djibouti, Holl-Holl was an old camp that was closed in the mid-2000s, as a consequence of massive repatriations to Ethiopia and to the breakaway territory of Somaliland where the security situation has relatively improved during the last decade. Over the last 6 y...

Embargo: 11:30 AM CET, 18 SEPTEMBER, 2012 Somalia’s Hawa Aden Mohamed wins the 2012 Nansen Refugee Award GENEVA, 18 September, 2012 – The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced today in Geneva that this year’s Nansen Refugee Award goes to Hawa Aden Mohamed, the founder an...

The number of Syrian refugees registered or assisted by UNHCR in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey has almost tripled since April 2012 and now stands at 112,000. Three quarters are women and children. This actual number of Syrian refugees is thought to be significantly higher, as many people seek to...

Somalia's refugee exodus crossed a new threshold this past week, with more than a million people now having fled the country for the surrounding region, according to the latest UNHCR data. The most recent arrivals continue to cite insecurity and dwindling food resources as the main reasons for their...

Conditions in South Sudan’s refugee camps have continued to worsen over the past few days under the strain of continuing large refugee inflows and flooding from torrential rains. The health situation has at this point become UNHCR’s priority concern, and we are watching closely for possible outbreak...

This past weekend UNHCR successfully completed the voluntary repatriation of 38 Tanzanian refugees from Zanzibar who had been residing in Mogadishu for the past 11 years. The group, comprising 12 families, were flown on two special UNHCR-chartered flights from Mogadishu to Zanzibar on Friday 6 Ju...

Six months ago refugees began fleeing Mali to Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso. Today, political instability in Bamako and insecurity in northern Mali continue to trigger the flight of thousands of refugees to neighbouring countries and other parts of Mali. Over 365,000 people are estimated to hav...

Conflict is normally cited by displaced Somalis as the main reason for flight, but in recent weeks we have seen an increase in IDPs and refugees also citing difficulty in providing for themselves. Over the past seven weeks we have registered some 6,000 Somalis who have cited such difficulties - usua...