The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the UN agency responsible for protecting refugees and displaced persons who are victims of persecution and conflict, promoting solutions by establishing settlements in their country of origin or another that provides refuge for them and ensuring their right to asylum.
Assistance has already been given to some 120 million refugees and displaced persons and at the end of 2009 about 40 million people were under the protection of UNHCR. There has been considerable growth in the number of Afghan, Colombian, Iraqi, Somali, Sudanese and Syrian refugees.
The organisation has won the Nobel Peace Prize twice, in 1954 and in 1981, and won the Prince of Asturias Prize in 1991. It presents the Nansen Refugee Award to those who have done outstanding work for the cause of refugees. Its headquarters are in Geneva and it has more than 250 offices in different parts of the world. About 7,000 people work for UNHCR, and its goodwill ambassadors include Barbara Hendricks, Angelina Jolie and Julien Clerc.
LiberPress Catalonia Award 2015
UNHCR won the 2015 LiberPress Catalonia Award for its unsurpassable humanitarian work and solidarity on behalf of millions of people who have had to leave their countries because of war, or economic, ethnic and religious persecution and for providing support, shelter and assistance to displaced people from all over the world, since it was created. The best thing we could wish for would be for them to have no work, now that they have so much. Their work is a great example to all of us.