The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to a third country. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with over 18,879 staff working in 138 countries as of 2020.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is a global humanitarian aid, relief, and development nongovernmental organization. Founded in 1933 as the International Relief Association, at the request of Albert Einstein, and changing its name in 1942 after amalgamating with the similar Emergency Rescue Committee, the IRC provides emergency aid and long-term assistance to refugees and those displaced by war, persecution, or natural disaster. The IRC is currently working in about 40 countries and 26 U.S. cities where it resettles refugees and helps them become self-sufficient. It focuses mainly on health, education, economic wellbeing, power, and safety.
An internally displaced person (IDP) is someone who is forced to leave their home but who remains within their country's borders. They are often referred to as refugees, although they do not fall within the legal definitions of a refugee.
A humanitarian crisis is defined as a singular event or a series of events that are threatening in terms of health, safety or well-being of a community or large group of people. It may be an internal or external conflict and usually occurs throughout a large land area. Local, national and international responses are necessary in such events.
Frederick C. Cuny was an American humanitarian whose work spanned disaster relief, refugee emergency management, recovery from war and civil conflict as well as disaster and emergency preparedness, mitigation and peacebuilding. He was first and foremost a practitioner, but also a prolific author, an educator and a field-based researcher. He has been described as "a great American – a sort of universal Schindler, a man with lists of millions of people in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe whose lives he succored or saved." Another tribute to Cuny claimed that he "was one of the world's most accomplished disaster relief experts, both a pioneer and an iconoclast in the field of international humanitarian aid."
Danish Refugee Council (DRC) is a private Danish humanitarian nonprofit organization, founded in 1956. It serves as an umbrella organization for 33 member organizations.
The Norwegian Refugee Council is a humanitarian, non-governmental organisation that protects the rights of people affected by displacement. This includes refugees and internally displaced persons who are forced to flee their homes as a result of conflict, human rights violations and acute violence, as well as climate change and natural disasters.
The International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) is an international organization that serves and protects uprooted people, including migrants, refugees, and internally displaced people, regardless of faith, race, ethnicity or nationality. With staff and programs in over 40 countries, ICMC advocates for sustainable solutions and rights-based policies directly and through a worldwide network of 132 member organizations.
Bruno Geddo is an Italian national, born in Novara in 1959. He has served with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for over 30 years in Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East.
Dr. Neil Boothby is a psychologist and former US Government special advisor and senior coordinator to the USAID administrator on Children in Adversity, and former director of the Program on Forced Migration and Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Currently, he is the founding Director of the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on the psychosocial consequences of organized violence on children. As a senior representative of UNICEF, UNHCR, and Save the Children, he has worked for more than 25 years with children in crises in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe and is an internationally recognized expert and advocate for children affected by war and displacement. He has received numerous awards for his work on behalf of war-affected children, including the Red Cross International Humanitarian of the Year Award, the Mickey Leland Award, the United Nation's Golden Achievement Award for Social Services, and Duke University's Humanitarian Service Award.
Kenneth Hogate Bacon was an American journalist who served as a spokesman for the Department of Defense during the Presidency of Bill Clinton, and later as president of Refugees International, an organization advocating for displaced persons and solutions for displacement crises.
Julia Ann Vadala Taft was a United States official who was involved in international humanitarian assistance, and who served as Director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance from 1986 to 1989, and as Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration from 1997 to 2001.
Elizabeth G. Ferris is a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and serves as the co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement. In addition to her positions within the Brookings Institution, Ferris is an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. She is also commissioner of the Women's Refugee Commission, a distinguished author and a lifelong humanitarian.
Institute for the Study of International Migration is a private research institute located in Washington, DC. Founded in 1998 as part of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, it is associated with the Georgetown University Law Center. The Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) is an innovative multidisciplinary center that studies the social, economic, environmental, and political dimensions of international migration.
International Relief and Development, Inc. (IRD), renamed Blumont, is an organization that purports to provide relief, stabilization, and development programs worldwide. In 2015, IRD was the subject of a Washington Post investigation that highlighted the organization's performance and management of taxpayer money. Among other irregularities, the organization had charged the US Government $1.1 million for staff parties and retreats at exclusive resorts. In January 2016, IRD announced that it was changing its name to Blumont and relocating to Madison, Wisconsin.
The Cambodian humanitarian crisis from 1969 to 1993 consisted of a series of related events which resulted in the death, displacement, or resettlement abroad of millions of Cambodians.
The Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) was an organizational unit within the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) charged by the President of the United States with directing and coordinating international United States government disaster assistance. USAID merged the former offices of OFDA and Food for Peace (FFP) in 2020 to form the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA).
Lionel Alexander Rosenblatt is a former American diplomat, Refugee Coordinator at the United States Embassy in Thailand, and President of Refugees International, an advocacy organization for refugees. Rosenblatt was one of the foremost advocates for resettling Indochinese refugees in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s.
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 48/144 of 20 December 1993 is a resolution in which the General Assembly expressed its concern at the ongoing degradation of the humanitarian situation in Azerbaijan because of the displacement of considerable number of citizens due to Nagorno Karabakh conflict and supporting "emergency international assistance to refugees and displaced persons in Azerbaijan". The resolution is titled “48/114. Emergency international assistance to refugees and displaced persons in Azerbaijan”. It became the fifth United Nations document concerning Nagorno-Karabakh and the first United Nations General Assembly document on humanitarian aid to those affected by this conflict. This resolution was the first international document affirming the number of refugees and displaced persons in Azerbaijan exceeded one million. The document does not make any specific reference to previous UN resolutions on the ongoing conflict, but "its relevant resolutions regarding humanitarian assistance to refugees and displaced persons". The resolution was adopted by consensus without voting.
Brock Daniel Bierman is an American humanitarian and public official who served as Assistant Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) Bureau for Europe and Eurasia under president Donald Trump from December 21, 2017 until 2021. He is president and CEO of Ukraine Focus, a nonprofit he helped established and officially launched in March 2023.
