Oh! The Aches and Pains!

Couldn’t we all use a massage now and then to get out all the knots and kinks from a long night of studying or a difficult day in the office?

With funding from a UNHCR program aimed at teaching local and refugee women the skills they need to work as community rehabilitation workers, 29 women are learning how to treat disease, injury and deformity through exercise and physical methods at the Physiotherapy Educational Institute in Peshwar, Pakistan. Of these women, 22 are refugees from Afghanistan, who hope to apply their new skills in Afghanistan if they return.

The course is part of UNHCR’s Refugee Affected Hosting Areas (RAHA) program. There are 1.7 million registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan. After the devastating earthquake in northern Pakistan in 2005, which affected both Pakistanis and Afghans, the program was necessary because few people had the skills to help the thousands of people in need of rehabilitation.

For more information, check out this article.

UN Common Humanitarian Fund to Benefit One Million in Central African Republic

The Central African Republic (CAR), having been subjected to violence as a result of spill-over from Darfur, will receive money from the new United Nations Common Humanitarian Fund. The increasing instability in CAR, a result of the escalating violence neighboring Chad and Sudan’s Darfur region, has affected more than one million people in the country. 2.5 million dollars has been pledged by the United States, directing the funds to be focused on health care, access to water, survival of infants and young people, and aid to help those who have been displaced. The new funding will allow humanitarian action to be more efficient; it will be directed to the 110,000 displaced people and the one million others affected by the conflict. The influx of funds will allow those on the ground to respond to emergencies faster and more efficiently.

UN Helps Settle over 5,000 Refugees from Bhutan

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR] helped more than 5,000 refugees from Bhutan leave their camps in Nepal for resettlement in other countries. The United States accepted the largest number of refugees with 4,833, followed by 131 refugees in Australia and 129 in New Zealand. The program hopes to resettle another 2,000 to 3,000 before the end of the year. There are currently 107,000 refugees originating from Bhutan living in seven camps in eastern Nepal. Nearly half of them have expressed an interest in resettlement. Some of the refugees have been in exile for as long as 17 years. The resettlement process has run smoothly due to the collaborative efforts of UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration [IOM], the Nepalese government and the resettlement countries. The program has created opportunities for success for the refugees by holding English classes and skill-training at the camps. "Although starting over is not easy, there is a program for everyone with the resettling agencies, no matter what age, qualification or gender. We have seen other former refugees doing well, so we can do it as well," says one refugee who recently arrived in the U.S.

A 'Swish' Heard around the World

He dribbles, he shoots, he scores!

With that swish of the net, the Bulls forward Luol Deng gets the crowd cheering, and gets Sudanese kids on their feet as well. Luol donates $50 for every basket he scores to Ninemillion, a campaign created two years ago by the UNHCR, with Nike and Microsoft as invaluable team members. It hopes to give over nine million children, many in South Sudan, better access to education, sports and technology by 2010. Not only does the campaign strive to secure donations, but it wishes to give a voice to the refugee children and to inspire people of every nation with their undying courage and limitless strength.

Team up with Luol and the UNHCR in guaranteeing a brighter future for refugee children and in inspiring a new generation alive with their own hoop dreams!


JOIN OUR TEAM!

Image Source

Follow the Footsteps of the Famous

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared the famous actor, George Clooney, as the ninth United Nations messenger. On January 31, 2008, Clooney will receive his official position as an international peacekeeping promoter because his example, according to UN, Oprah, and many others, is worthy enough to follow.

After Clooney made great strides to campaign on behalf of refugees in Darfur, UN officials decided to use Clooney’s celebrity to help increase public awareness on Darfur and other international issues concerning peace, violence, and forced displacement.

Clooney has already worked with notable celebrities including Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Jerry Weintraub, and Brad Pitt to raise funds and publicize in the name of their charity organization Not on Our Watch.

This charity and many UN organizations are working to mitigate drastic realities in Sudan and other poverty stricken nations. Watch Clooney’s his heartfelt speech to United Nations, which he believes is crucial in promoting peace worldwide. Help organizations like UNDP-USA promote humanitarian efforts. Follow the footsteps of the famous and work on behalf of others.

Learn something, feed people

You enrich your vocabulary while putting rice on a hungry person's table somewhere in the world. That is the basic plan Free Rice, the vocabulary game that is sweeping through the halls of DC think tanks and high school writting classes.

It is much easier for you to play it than read about it... so click here and spend 3 minutes. You will get addicted or feel inferior, either way you will earn some rice for hungry folks and learn something about the English language.

Ok, you are still reading and want to know how it works? Well, basically there is an ad banner on the site and the advertisers pay for the rice that you win in the game. The rice goes to the United Nations World Food Program for distribution to those who need it most.

What a good idea!

Helping the People of Iraq

Some good news from the Iraq operations of the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR this week:

• Earlier this week they announced that over 20,000 Iraqi Refugees have been resettled this year. While it is horrible that these individuals have suffered trauma and have had to leave their homes, UNHCR is working hard to make sure that these people have the chance at a normal life in their new nations. For a sense of what this entails, check out this story on UNHCR's website.
• For the most desperate of the 2.2 million Iraqi refugees that are still in refugee camps on in Syria and Jordan, on Sunday UNHCR will begin providing finanical assistance via ATM cards with $100-200/month. Cash assistance helps families to purchase necessities when they need them. It is expected that 7,000 families will initially benefit from this emergency relief.
• To top it off, UNHCR is helping the Iraqi Government to help 5,000 families (about 30,000 individuals) who wish to return to their homes by providing them support packages and repair kits.

Refugees in Despair

It has been an extremely tumultuous week for Iraq-related refugees, but UNCHR has been doing its best to alleviate difficulties. In Syria on Monday, UNHCR started registering Iraqi refugees in the country’s northeast region. The registration team expects to register tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees in the coming year. UNHCR spokesperson Jennifer Pagonis said that the commission estimates nearly 1.4 million Iraqis in Syria, and once they have a clearer picture of the whereabouts of these refugees, they will be better equipped to protect and assist them.

Nearby, at the Al Tanf camp for Palestinian refugees on the Iraq-Syria border, a fire has swept through, injuring twenty-five people. Approximately 310 Palestinian refugees live at the camp after having fled sectarian violence in Iraq in 2006. These refugees, who have been denied entry into neighboring countries, are mostly women and children.

It is the third fire the camp has seen in less than a year, and Pagonis stresses that this latest disaster, “yet again highlights the need for a humanitarian solution to be found for Palestinians trapped at the border after fleeing Baghdad.” In the meantime, a UNHCR team has rushed tents, mattresses and kitchen supplies to the camp, organized refilling of fire extinguishers, and explored extra fire-prevention measures.

You Reap what you Sew

Violent crime, drug cultivation, and fighting between rival armed groups continue to plague Colombia. As a result, more than 2.2 million Colombians have been internally displaced, with many others seeking refuge in neighboring Venezuela. Rosa*, who comes from the particularly violent northern region of Colombia, Norte de Santander, was forced to flee with her family to Venezuela when her father was murdered in 2002. Afraid and unhappy, they quickly returned to Colombia and began living in a swettlement in Cucuta, which lacked proper health and sanitation facilities.

As part of a project to empower the displaced refugees of Colombia, the UNHCR helped Rosa restart her life by providing her with a sweing machine and knitting equipment. Rosa exclaims,

I make purses, belts, earrings, blouses and even bathing costumes.
People buy my clothes and my mother helps me by selling them in Cucuta...I
cannot complain.

The UNHCR project is linked to the Mexico Plan of Action, which aims to protect refugees and displaced people in Latin America, and has been adopted by nearly two dozen governments in the region. The UNHCR hopes that this program will encourage self-sufficiency and local integration, while also improving social and economic development of internally displaced Colombians. Rosa is quite hopeful that this program will do just that.

*Name changed for protection

What if you couldn't go home?

Thousands of Burundians face this problem every day, anxiously awaiting their turn to go home, free of the fear of persecution. Sometimes, this can takes years.

But there is both hope and help on the way. UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, has assisted 350,000 Burundians in leaving the camps and returning to their country after years of dangerous war.

Though going home is a great achievement, UNHCR's work is only beginning. Though many Burundians are glad to return , they are hindered by the lack of basic services when they reach their former communities. The process of reintegration is very complex and must take this reality into account.

To bridge this gap between relief and development initiatives, UNHCR has

built more than 51,000 houses since 2003... and another 6,750 will be finished this year. UNHCR also rehabilitated 13 health centers and built or renovated some 500 classrooms in areas of return between 2002 and 2006.

The reality of a refugee can be incredibly difficult, but resilience ensures that life can also get better. Click here if you want to help UNHCR provide more services of this kind.

Making Life Easier for Sudanese Refugees

The desire of refugees to return to their homeland is heartbreaking – but repatriation can only be successful if the receiving country has developed basic infrastructure and can provide essential humanitarian services to those it seeks to welcome.

The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is intimately familiar with this challenge, particularly in the region of South Sudan, where refugees from the region have scattered into Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia and the Central African Republic.

High Commissioner António Guterres recently visited South Sudan to raise awareness during World Refugee Day (June 20) while also highlighting an emerging success story.

Since 2005, more than 155,000 Sudanese refugees from at least seven countries have returned home to South Sudan, including 64,000 through UNHCR’s voluntary and assisted repatriation operation. However, over 300,000 refugees remain in camps in neighboring states.

To improve this situation, UNHCR plans to bring home a total of 102,000 refugees by the end of 2007. The plan is to provide them with individual repatriation packages and community-based reintegration support. UNHCR needs all the support it can get, whether through awareness raising or donations.

Click here to donate now!