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82-500: In 2011, Alight helped nearly 2.5 million people get essential services to regain their health and take back control of their lives. Alight works with its partners and constituencies to provide opportunities and expertise to communities of refugees and internally displaced persons in seven countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe, including Iraq , Kosovo , and in the Darfur region of Sudan and

164-407: A particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it. In 1967 the definition

246-714: A Repatriation Agreement with the USSR. The interpretation of this Agreement resulted in the forcible repatriation of all Soviets regardless of their wishes. When the war ended in May 1945, British and United States civilian authorities ordered their military forces in Europe to deport to the Soviet Union millions of former residents of the USSR, including many persons who had left Russia and established different citizenship decades before. The forced repatriation operations took place from 1945 to 1947. At

328-661: A health clinic, distributed shelter materials, built latrines and sanitation systems. On February 9, the first three child-friendly spaces opened in the Terraine Acra settlement. 300 children were expected and 1,000 showed up. On April 10, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro visited Alight's camp in Terrain Acra [1] . Alight is working with the local community and coordinating with international and local NGOs to help people survive and rebuild. [2] The American Refugee Committee team has been responding to

410-504: A long history: Ovid was sent to Tomis ; Voltaire was sent to England. By the 1648 Peace of Westphalia , nations recognized each other's sovereignty . However, it was not until the advent of romantic nationalism in late 18th-century Europe that nationalism gained sufficient prevalence for the phrase country of nationality to become practically meaningful, and for border crossing to require that people provide identification. The term "refugee" sometimes applies to people who might fit

492-730: A major, long-term initiative to expand comprehensive reproductive health care services in Southern Sudan. Alight has recently initiated the Through Our Eyes project in southern Sudan, using hands-on video and community participation to get people talking about gender-based violence and how to prevent it. Alight currently works in Juba , Kajo Keji , Malakal , Nimule , and Yei . Alight's oldest program, Alight has operated continuously in Thailand since 1979. Currently Alight works in refugee camps along

574-879: A new frontier between the Soviet Union and Poland approximately at the Curzon Line , despite the protestations from the Polish government-in-exile in London and the western Allies at the Teheran Conference and the Yalta Conference of February 1945. After the German surrender on 7 May 1945, the Allies occupied the remainder of Germany, and the Berlin declaration of 5 June 1945 confirmed the unfortunate division of Allied-occupied Germany according to

656-476: A person who sought sanctuary in a holy place could not be harmed without inviting divine retribution was familiar to the ancient Greeks and ancient Egyptians . However, the right to seek asylum in a church or other holy place was first codified in law by King Æthelberht of Kent in about AD 600. Similar laws were implemented throughout Europe in the Middle Ages . The related concept of political exile also has

738-626: A refugee at this time was an individual with either a Nansen passport or a " certificate of identity " issued by the International Refugee Organization. The Constitution of the International Refugee Organization, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 15 December 1946, specified the agency's field of operations. Controversially, this defined "persons of German ethnic origin" who had been expelled, or were to be expelled from their countries of birth into

820-625: A result of deportation policy of Armenia against ethnic Azerbaijanis. During the 1948 Palestine War , some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs or 85% of the Palestinian Arab population of territories that became Israel fled or were expelled from their homes by the Israelis. The International Refugee Organization (IRO) was founded on 20 April 1946, and took over the functions of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration , which

902-528: A result of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War . These refugees are assisted by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). UNHCR also provides protection and assistance to other categories of displaced persons: asylum seekers, refugees who returned home voluntarily but still need help rebuilding their lives, local civilian communities directly affected by large refugee movements, stateless people and so-called internally displaced people (IDPs), as well as people in refugee-like and IDP-like situations. The agency

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984-550: A result of who they are, what they believe in or say, or because of armed conflict, violence or serious public disorder." Such a person may be called an asylum seeker until granted refugee status by a contracting state or by the UNHCR if they formally make a claim for asylum . Internally Displaced People (IDPs) are often called refugees, but they are distinguished from refugees because they have not crossed an international border, although their reasons for leaving their home may be

1066-881: A safe place against Catholic persecution after the first Edict of Fontainebleau in 1540. The word appeared in the English language when French Huguenots fled to Britain in large numbers after the 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau (the revocation of the 1598 Edict of Nantes ) in France and the 1687 Declaration of Indulgence in England and Scotland. The word meant "one seeking asylum", until around 1916, when it evolved to mean "one fleeing home", applied in this instance to civilians in Flanders heading west to escape fighting in World War I . The first modern definition of an international refugee status came with

1148-470: A third country. Alight also operates in coastal villages between Phuket and Ranong in the south of Thailand. Alight has been working in Uganda off-and-on since 1994, when Alight began operations in neighboring Southern Sudan. Today, Alight manages 14 internally displaced persons camps in the northern Gulu District of Uganda. Alight was given an A+ rating by CharityWatch , a charity watchdog created by

1230-634: Is a refugee. An article in the foreign press describes this: The agency defines Palestinian refugees as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” In 1965, UNRWA changed the eligibility requirements to be a Palestinian refugee to include third-generation descendants, and in 1982, it extended it again, to include all descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, regardless of whether they had been granted citizenship elsewhere. This classification process

1312-532: Is also currently working to help Pakistani families who have begun returning. So far, 100,000 families have gone back to the Swat Valley . But the fighting destroyed infrastructure and other systems, leaving people without basics like clean water and sanitation. Alight will soon begin work digging wells and repairing infrastructure so that basic necessities will be waiting for families when they return home. In late July 2010 monsoon rainfall caused flash floods swelling

1394-572: Is currently providing for emergency relief and recovery in Haiti . Alight provides shelter, clean water and sanitation, health care, skills training, microcredit education, and protection to help survivors of war and natural disasters to rebuild their lives with dignity, health care, security, and self-sufficiency. Moved by the plight of millions of men, women and children affected by the conflict in Southeast Asia , Chicago businessman Neal Ball founded

1476-539: Is inconsistent with how all other refugees in the world are classified, including the definition used by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the laws concerning refugees in the United States. Refugee resettlement is defined as "an organized process of selection, transfer and arrival of individuals to another country. This definition is restrictive, as it does not account for

1558-427: Is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and to resolve refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another state or territory and to offer "durable solutions" to refugees and refugee hosting countries. Unlike other refugee groups,

1640-438: Is sometimes included in this process, but the focus is generally on short‐term survival needs rather than long‐term career planning." Refugee integration means "a dynamic, long‐term process in which a newcomer becomes a full and equal participant in the receiving society... Compared to the general construct of settlement, refugee integration has a greater focus on social, cultural and structural dimensions. This process includes

1722-458: Is taking a variety of actions to directly help millions of Darfuris who are without access to clean water, who are unable to make a living for their families, who live in camps with no access to farmland or who are forced to flee fighting too frequently to raise any crops. Alight's corps of midwives assist pregnant mothers to safely deliver their babies, and health clinics provide treatment and medications to thousands of people each month. Alight

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1804-470: Is working with Darfuri communities to dig wells that will provide safe drinking water to thousands, and Alight is partnering with families to plant crops that will feed and support them. Alight provides tools and seeds and the families bring the farming skills to grow the food that will sustain them. In schools Alight provides children with nutritious meals. Parents have one less mouth to feed, and their children will be educated and better prepared to help rebuild

1886-471: The 1951 Refugee Convention , is disputed. Additionally, academics have critiqued the lack of a theoretical basis of refugee studies and dominance of policy-oriented research. In response, scholars have attempted to steer the field toward establishing a theoretical groundwork of refugee studies through "situating studies of particular refugee (and other forced migrant) groups in the theories of cognate areas (and major disciplines), [providing] an opportunity to use

1968-637: The Allies of World War II created the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) to provide aid to areas liberated from Axis powers of World War II , including parts of Europe and China. By the end of the War, Europe had more than 40 million refugees. UNRRA was involved in returning over seven million refugees, then commonly referred to as displaced persons or DPs, to their country of origin and setting up displaced persons camps for one million refugees who refused to be repatriated. Even two years after

2050-561: The American Institute of Philanthropy to rate non-profit organizations based on the ratio of funds spent on humanitarian aid compared to administrative overhead. Charity Navigator gives Alight 4 stars, its highest rating. Reader's Digest magazine, Money magazine, Worth magazine, and GiveSpot.com also highly rate Alight. In 2012, Alight was awarded the Peter F. Drucker Award for Non-Profit Innovation. Records of Alight (and

2132-648: The American Refugee Committee ) are available for research use. They include domestic and international program records, organizational files, correspondence, subject files, publications, printed material, and newspaper clippings. Refugees A refugee , according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is a person "forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country. They are unable to return to their own country because of feared persecution as

2214-819: The Delmas district of Port-au-Prince, 1,000 hygiene and kitchen kits in the Nazon district. On January 26, Alight began managing settlement of 5,000 people in Terrain Acra district of Port-au-Prince, working with multiple relief agencies. In the next few months the camp size grew to 25,000 people. Of the 19 most crowded settlements (of 300 total), Terrain Acra was the only one with an organization overseeing and coordinating relief activities. Four cargo planes carrying 90,000 pounds of donated emergency medical and shelter supplies arrived in Port-au-Prince from Minneapolis. In Terraine Acra, Alight opened

2296-640: The Democratic Republic of the Congo . Alight quickly constructed roads, bridges, shelters, latrines, storage warehouses, and health centers, and began receiving refugees within a month of the request. The culminating achievement of the construction efforts was the drilling of a borehole to tap an aquifer , which provides 100,000 liters of naturally purified, filtered water per day. In the fall of 2007, Alight expanded Nyabiheke Camp to receive 2,000 more people fleeing increased violence. The American Refugee Committee

2378-670: The League of Nations in 1921 from the Commission for Refugees. Following World War II and in response to the large numbers of people fleeing Eastern Europe , the United Nations passed the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees . It defines "refugee" in Article 1.A.2 as any person who: owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of

2460-588: The Reich Citizenship Law of 1935. On 4 July 1936 an agreement was signed under League auspices that defined a refugee coming from Germany as "any person who was settled in that country, who does not possess any nationality other than German nationality, and in respect of whom it is established that in law or in fact he or she does not enjoy the protection of the Government of the Reich" (article 1). The mandate of

2542-640: The Second Liberian Civil War . Alight began providing services to people living in camps at Brown's Town and Unification Town and continues serving those locations today. Today, there are millions of Afghan refugees living in refugee camps in Pakistan 's Baluchistan Province. Some fled the oppression of the Taliban , others the Soviet invasion in the 1980s. For years they have known no way of life other than in

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2624-576: The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) itself, in addition to the 1951 definition, recognizes the following persons as refugees: who are outside their country of nationality or habitual residence and unable to return there owing to serious and indiscriminate threats to life, physical integrity or freedom resulting from generalized violence or events seriously disturbing public order. The European Union passed minimum standards as part of its definition of refugee, underlined by article 2 (c) of Directive No. 2004/83/EC, essentially reproducing

2706-497: The genocide . Alight manages all three major refugee camps in Rwanda, providing health care, water, construction, and sanitation services as well as programs combating gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS. Alight also manages successful income generation programs in the camps and hires and trains refugees wherever possible. In 2005, the government of Rwanda asked Alight to build a refugee camp at Nyabiheke to accommodate 5,000 new refugees from

2788-552: The 1933 Refugee Convention, an early, and relatively modest, attempt at a human rights charter, and in general assisted around one million refugees worldwide. The rise of Nazism led to such a very large increase in the number of refugees from Germany that in 1933 the League created a high commission for refugees coming from Germany. Besides other measures by the Nazis which created fear and flight, Jews were stripped of German citizenship by

2870-480: The 1951 definition, which the Organization of African Unity adopted in 1969: Every person who, owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or the whole of his country of origin or nationality, is compelled to leave his place of habitual residence in order to seek refuge in another place outside his country of origin or nationality. The 1984

2952-575: The American Refugee Committee in 1978. One of ARC's first programs opened at Khao-I-Dang refugee camp in Thailand in late 1979. ARC also provided medical and public health services at Nong Samet Refugee Camp , Phanat Nikhom, Ban Vinai Refugee Camp and Site Two Refugee Camp until 1993, when the camps closed and ARC turned its attention to programs inside Cambodia . ARC later provided health, sanitation and laboratory services at Khao Phlu Refugee Camp from 1997 until 1999. ARC pioneered

3034-952: The British authorities closed that destination in 1939. On 31 December 1938 both the Nansen Office and High Commission were dissolved and replaced by the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees under the Protection of the League. This coincided with the flight of 500,000 Spanish Republicans, soldiers as well as civilians, to France after their defeat by the Nationalists in 1939 in the Spanish Civil War . The conflict and political instability during World War II led to massive numbers of refugees (see World War II evacuation and expulsion ). In 1943,

3116-512: The Communist government. It is estimated that about 800,000 Russian refugees became stateless when Lenin revoked citizenship for all Russian expatriates in 1921. In 1923, the mandate of the commission was expanded to include the more than one million Armenians who left Turkish Asia Minor in 1915 and 1923 due to a series of events now known as the Armenian genocide . Over the next several years,

3198-713: The High Commission was subsequently expanded to include persons from Austria and Sudetenland , which Germany annexed after 1 October 1938 in accordance with the Munich Agreement . According to the Institute for Refugee Assistance, the actual count of refugees from Czechoslovakia on 1 March 1939 stood at almost 150,000. Between 1933 and 1939, about 200,000 Jews fleeing Nazism were able to find refuge in France, while at least 55,000 Jews were able to find refuge in Palestine before

3280-425: The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established on 14 December 1950. It protects and supports refugees at the request of a government or the United Nations and assists in providing durable solutions, such as return or resettlement . All refugees in the world are under UNHCR mandate except Palestinian refugees , who fled the current state of Israel between 1947 and 1949, as

3362-727: The Pakistani government in the mountainous region of northwestern Pakistan. Many fled to camps without clean water or enough to eat. But the vast majority have been taken in by local communities, packed in tight quarters – sometimes 50–60 people in very small homes. Water and sanitation systems were on the brink of collapse, and there was a serious threat of outbreaks of disease. Alight quickly began trucking clean water into refugee camps and digging wells and latrines to ensure safe and sanitary living conditions. Aid workers have also stepped in at local clinics to provide comprehensive medical care and to try to reach as many survivors as possible. Alight

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3444-601: The Polish western border as that of 1937, placing one fourth of Germany's territory under the Provisional Polish administration . Article XII ordered that the remaining German populations in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary be transferred west in an "orderly and humane" manner. Although not approved by Allies at Potsdam, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans living in Yugoslavia and Romania were deported to slave labour in

3526-608: The Soviet Union, to Allied-occupied Germany , and subsequently to the German Democratic Republic ( East Germany ), Austria and the Federal Republic of Germany ( West Germany ). This entailed the largest population transfer in history. In all 15 million Germans were affected, and more than two million perished during the expulsions of the German population . (See Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950) .) Between

3608-463: The Thai-Burmese border, providing health care services, health education, and water, sanitation and environmental health services to Karen refugees in camps on the border with Myanmar . Alight focuses on building the capacity and skills of constituents, training them to become health care providers and community leaders so they may apply these skills upon their return to Myanmar or their relocation to

3690-590: The UN created a specific entity called the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the aftermath of the war in 1948, which led to a serious refugee crisis in the Arab region, and was responsible for the displacement of 700,000 Palestinian refugees. This number has gone up to at least 5 million refugees in the last 70 years. The United Nations defines Palestinian refugees as "persons whose normal place of residence

3772-550: The Yalta Conference, which stipulated the continued existence of the German Reich as a whole, which would include its eastern territories as of 31 December 1937. This did not impact on Poland's eastern border, and Stalin refused to be removed from these eastern Polish territories . In the last months of World War II, about five million German civilians from the German provinces of East Prussia , Pomerania and Silesia fled

3854-570: The acquisition of legal rights, mastering the language and culture, reaching safety and stability, developing social connections and establishing the means and markers of integration, such as employment, housing and health." Refugee workforce integration is understood to be "a process in which refugees engage in economic activities (employment or self‐employment) which are commensurate with individuals' professional goals and previous qualifications and experience, and provide adequate economic security and prospects for career advancement." The idea that

3936-690: The advance of the Red Army from the east and became refugees in Mecklenburg , Brandenburg and Saxony . Since the spring of 1945, the Poles had been forcefully expelling the remaining German population in these provinces. When the Allies met in Potsdam on 17 July 1945 at the Potsdam Conference , a chaotic refugee situation faced the occupying powers. The Potsdam Agreement , Article VIII signed on 2 August 1945, defined

4018-405: The camps. Entire generations have grown up without the right to move about freely or the possibility to make a living for their families. Alight provides primary health care to 98,000 Afghan refugees in the camps and in the surrounding communities. Alight also provides special attention to pregnant mothers and training for refugees in caring for their own communities. Alight helps refugees cope with

4100-451: The commission. Its most notable achievement was the Nansen passport , a refugee travel document , for which it was awarded the 1938 Nobel Peace Prize . The Nansen Office was plagued by problems of financing, an increase in refugee numbers, and a lack of co-operation from some member states, which led to mixed success overall. However, the Nansen Office managed to lead fourteen nations to ratify

4182-571: The country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s. Most European refugees (principally Jews and Slavs) fleeing the Nazis and the Soviet Union were barred from going to the United States until after World War II, when Congress enacted the temporary Displaced Persons Act in 1948. In 1930, the Nansen International Office for Refugees (Nansen Office) was established as a successor agency to

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4264-496: The definition outlined by the 1951 Convention, were it applied retroactively. There are many candidates. For example, after the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685 outlawed Protestantism in France, hundreds of thousands of Huguenots fled to England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, South Africa , Germany and Prussia . The repeated waves of pogroms that swept Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries prompted mass Jewish emigration (more than 2 million Russian Jews emigrated in

4346-409: The end of War and the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, more than 563,700 refugees from East Germany traveled to West Germany for asylum from the Soviet occupation . During the same period, millions of former Russian citizens were forcefully repatriated against their will into the USSR. On 11 February 1945, at the conclusion of the Yalta Conference , the United States and United Kingdom signed

4428-413: The end of War, some 850,000 people still lived in DP camps across Western Europe. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, Israel accepted more than 650,000 Jewish refugees by 1950. By 1953, over 250,000 refugees were still in Europe, most of them old, infirm, crippled, or otherwise disabled. After the Soviet armed forces captured eastern Poland from the Germans in 1944, the Soviets unilaterally declared

4510-439: The end of World War II, there were more than 5 million "displaced persons" from the Soviet Union in Western Europe . About 3 million had been forced laborers ( Ostarbeiters ) in Germany and occupied territories. The Soviet POWs and the Vlasov men were put under the jurisdiction of SMERSH (Death to Spies). Of the 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war captured by the Germans, 3.5 million had died while in German captivity by

4592-402: The end of the war. The survivors on their return to the USSR were treated as traitors (see Order No. 270 ). Over 1.5 million surviving Red Army soldiers imprisoned by the Nazis were sent to the Gulag . Poland and Soviet Ukraine conducted population exchanges following the imposition of a new Poland-Soviet border at the Curzon Line in 1944. About 2,100,000 Poles were expelled west of

4674-409: The first Alight emergency response team members arrived in Port-au-Prince. They started planning the response, hiring local staff, and coordinating with the United Nations and other partners. In the following days and weeks additional staff with expertise in emergency response, logistics , health, water/sanitation, shelter, and protection arrived in Haiti. Alight distributed food to 2,200 people in

4756-432: The frustrations of living in a camp by organizing youth clubs and activities, working to prevent and respond to domestic violence in the camps, and building awareness of the threat of HIV/AIDS. In October 2005, a massive earthquake shattered communities throughout mountainous northern Pakistan. The impact has been long-lasting, with entire families and villages wiped out and vital infrastructure destroyed. Within hours of

4838-456: The government and the Taliban in northwest Pakistan. Alight also responded to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami , providing relief services in Sri Lanka and Indonesia and a Fishing Boat Project in Thailand. On January 12, 2010, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck just outside Port-au-Prince . The capital city and surrounding towns were completely destroyed and a million people were left homeless. 50,000 were reported to have died. On January 14,

4920-419: The increasing prevalence of unmanaged migration processes." The term refugee relocation refers to "a non‐organized process of individual transfer to another country." Refugee settlement refers to "the process of basic adjustment to life ‒ often in the early stages of transition to the new country ‒ including securing access to housing, education, healthcare, documentation and legal rights [and] employment

5002-540: The mandate was expanded further to cover Assyrians and Turkish refugees. In all of these cases, a refugee was defined as a person in a group for which the League of Nations had approved a mandate, as opposed to a person to whom a general definition applied. The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey involved about two million people (around 1.5 million Anatolian Greeks and 500,000 Muslims in Greece) most of whom were forcibly repatriated and denaturalized from homelands of centuries or millennia (and guaranteed

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5084-574: The narrow definition of refugee offered by the UN 1951 Convention. Nevertheless, by virtue of articles 2 (e) and 15 of the same Directive, persons who have fled a war-caused generalized violence are, at certain conditions, eligible for a complementary form of protection, called subsidiary protection . The same form of protection is foreseen for displaced people who, without being refugees, are nevertheless exposed, if returned to their countries of origin, to death penalty, torture or other inhuman or degrading treatments. UNRWA has an alternate definition of what

5166-419: The nationality of the destination country) by a treaty promoted and overseen by the international community as part of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) . The U.S. Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924 . The Immigration Act of 1924 was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially Jews , Italians and Slavs , who had begun to enter

5248-592: The new border (see Repatriation of Poles ), while about 450,000 Ukrainians were expelled to the east of the new border. The population transfer to Soviet Ukraine occurred from September 1944 to May 1946 (see Repatriation of Ukrainians ). A further 200,000 Ukrainians left southeast Poland more or less voluntarily between 1944 and 1945. According to the report of the U.S. Committee for Refugees (1995), 10 to 15 percent of 7.5 million Azerbaijani population were refugees or displaced people. Most of them were 228,840 refugee people of Azerbaijan who fled from Armenia in 1988 as

5330-726: The organization's new name on June 21, 2019, after research found that persons who received aid preferred not to be identified as refugees forever. Alight has humanitarian programs and provides medical care, shelter, protection services, clean water, community development support, microloans , and help for women who have suffered violence , as well as other opportunities to help refugees. In 2010, Alight had programs in Africa in Liberia , and Sierra Leone . At some time, they also had programs in Sudan , Darfur , Uganda , Rwanda In Asia, Alight programs are concentrated in Pakistan and in Thailand . In Pakistan, Alight has recently been working with to help civilians who have fled fighting between

5412-481: The particular circumstances of refugee situations to illuminate these more general theories and thus participate in the development of social science, rather than leading refugee studies into an intellectual cul-de-sac." Thus, the term refugee in the context of refugee studies can be referred to as "legal or descriptive rubric", encompassing socioeconomic backgrounds, personal histories, psychological analyses, and spiritualities. Headquartered in Geneva , Switzerland,

5494-457: The period 1881–1920). Between the Crimean War of 1853–56 and World War I, at least 2.5 million Muslims arrived in the Ottoman Empire as refugees, primarily from Russia and the Balkans. The Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 caused 800,000 people to leave their homes. Various groups of people were officially designated refugees beginning in World War I. However, when the First World War began, there were no rules in international law specifically dealing with

5576-435: The postwar Germany, as individuals who would "not be the concern of the Organization." This excluded from its purview a group that exceeded in number all the other European displaced persons put together. Also, because of disagreements between the Western allies and the Soviet Union, the IRO only worked in areas controlled by Western armies of occupation. With the occurrence of major instances of diaspora and forced migration ,

5658-417: The present. Most notably in 1988, the Journal of Refugee Studies was established as the field's first major interdisciplinary journal. The emergence of refugee studies as a distinct field of study has been criticized by scholars due to terminological difficulty. Since no universally accepted definition for the term "refugee" exists, the academic respectability of the policy-based definition, as outlined in

5740-481: The quake, Alight began getting survivors in Bagh District the emergency relief they needed – clean water, nutritious food, shelters for those left homeless and in need of emergency medical attention. Today, Alight's efforts are focused on working with communities to rebuild health care clinics and water systems in the region so that survivors can care for themselves. In the spring of 2009, three million people fled for their lives from fighting between Taliban forces and

5822-403: The refugee crisis on the border between Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia since December 2010, constructing shelters to house refugees in Nimba County , Liberia. On Sunday June 20, 2010, Alight's Rapid Response Team arrived in Osh , Kyrgyzstan, to assess the situation and the needs of the affected communities. In the fall of 2003, Alight launched a program to assist those who had been displaced by

5904-537: The region when the fighting has ended. Alight began operations in Kajo Keji County in Southern Sudan in 1994, providing health services to people displaced by the war. Operations have since grown dramatically, and Alight now operates an integrated program of health care, water and sanitation, and microenterprise development for war-affected residents and returning refugees. Since 2006, Alight has been implementing

5986-401: The regional, non-binding Latin-American Cartagena Declaration on Refugees included the following definition of refugees: persons who have fled their country because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order. As of 2011

6068-722: The river Swat and killing over 1,100 people. Alight's Emergency Response teams began work as the flooding subsided in early August, providing clean water and mobile health clinics for survivors. Alight's mobile health teams, especially water and sanitation teams, assembled and began coordinating with partners and authorities. Swat , Nowshera , Mardan , and Peshawar were the most severely affected areas. Roads were washed out, bridges gone, internet and telephone were functioning intermittently. Many affected communities remained inaccessible except by helicopter; others had been entirely obliterated. Alight began work in Rwanda in December 1994, following

6150-405: The same as those of refugees. In English, the term refugee derives from the root word refuge , from Old French refuge , meaning "hiding place". It refers to "shelter or protection from danger or distress", from Latin fugere , "to flee", and refugium , "a taking [of] refuge, place to flee back to". In Western history, the term was first applied to French Protestant Huguenots looking for

6232-503: The situation of refugees. The first international co-ordination of refugee affairs came with the creation by the League of Nations in 1921 of the High Commission for Refugees and the appointment of Fridtjof Nansen as its head. Nansen and the commission were charged with assisting the approximately 1,500,000 people who fled the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent civil war (1917–1921), most of them aristocrats fleeing

6314-582: The study of their causes and implications has emerged as a legitimate interdisciplinary area of research, and began to rise by mid to late 20th century, after World War II . Although significant contributions had been made before, the latter half of the 20th century saw the establishment of institutions dedicated to the study of refugees, such as the Association for the Study of the World Refugee Problem, which

6396-439: The treatment of tuberculosis in refugee-camp settings using an innovative program structure that other international agencies had argued was not feasible. In September 2017 ARC took over ORAM - Organization for Refuge, Asylum & Migration - which started as the only international organization devoted solely to advocating for sexual and gender minority asylum seekers and refugees fleeing persecution and violence. Alight became

6478-624: Was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict." The population of Palestinian refugees continues to grow due to multiple UNRWA reclassifications of what is considered to be a refugee. "In 1965, UNRWA changed the eligibility requirements to be a Palestinian refugee to include third-generation descendants, and in 1982, it extended it again, to include all descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, regardless of whether they had been granted citizenship elsewhere. This classification process

6560-579: Was basically confirmed by the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees . People fleeing from war , natural disasters , or poverty are generally not encompassed by the international right of asylum . However, many countries have implemented laws to protect also those Displaced Persons . Accordingly, the Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa expanded

6642-539: Was closely followed by the founding of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees . In particular, the 1981 volume of the International Migration Review defined refugee studies as "a comprehensive, historical, interdisciplinary and comparative perspective which focuses on the consistencies and patterns in the refugee experience." Following its publishing, the field saw a rapid increase in academic interest and scholarly inquiry, which has continued to

6724-512: Was shut down in 1947. While the handover was originally planned to take place at the beginning of 1947, it did not occur until July 1947. The International Refugee Organization was a temporary organization of the United Nations (UN), which itself had been founded in 1945, with a mandate to largely finish the UNRRA's work of repatriating or resettling European refugees. It was dissolved in 1952 after resettling about one million refugees. The definition of

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