The UNHCR Website states that their mission is:
UNHCR, the United Nations refugee organization, is mandated by the United Nations to lead and coordinate international action for the world-wide protection of refugees and the resolution of refugee problems.
UNHCR’s primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. UNHCR strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another state, and to return home voluntarily.
By assisting refugees to return to their own country or to settle in another country, UNHCR also seeks lasting solutions to their plight.
UNHCR’s efforts are mandated by the organization’s Statute, and guided by the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol.
International refugee law provides an essential framework of principles for UNHCR’s humanitarian activities.
UNHCR’s Executive Committee and the UN General Assembly have also authorized the organization’s involvement with other groups. These include people who are stateless or whose nationality is disputed and, in certain circumstances, internally displaced persons.
To ensure the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge... To protect refugees and to promote solutions
UNHCR seeks to reduce situations of forced displacement by encouraging states and other institutions to create conditions which are conducive to the protection of human rights and the peaceful resolution of disputes. In pursuit of the same objective, UNHCR actively seeks to consolidate the reintegration of returning refugees in their country of origin, thereby averting the recurrence of refugee-producing situations.
UNHCR offers protection and assistance to refugees and others in an impartial manner, on the basis of their need and irrespective of their race, religion, political opinion or gender. In all of its activities, UNHCR pays particular attention to the needs of children and seeks to promote the equal rights of women and girls.
In its efforts to protect refugees and to promote solutions to their problems, UNHCR works in partnership with governments, regional organizations, international and non-governmental organizations.
UNHCR is committed to the principle of participation by consulting refugees on decisions that affect their lives.
By virtue of its activities on behalf of refugees and displaced people, UNHCR also promotes the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter: maintaining international peace and security; developing friendly relations among nations; and encouraging respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
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Refugees are legally defined as people who are outside their countries because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group, and who cannot or do not want to return home. As a humanitarian, non-political organization, UNHCR has two basic and closely related aims – to protect refugees and to seek ways to help them restart their lives in a normal environment.
International protection is the cornerstone of the agency's work. In practice that means ensuring respect for a refugee's basic human rights and ensuring that no person will be returned involuntarily to a country where he or she has reason to fear persecution – a process known as refoulement.
UNHCR promotes international refugee agreements and monitors government compliance with international refugee law. Its staff work in a variety of locations ranging from capital cities to remote camps and border areas, attempting to provide the above mentioned protection and to minimize the threat of violence, including sexual assault, which many refugees are subject to, even in countries of asylum.
The organization seeks long-term or 'durable' solutions by helping refugees repatriate to their homeland if conditions warrant, by helping them to integrate in their countries of asylum or to resettle in third countries.
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