Non-Governmental Organizations

Syria/ IDPs/ UNHCR staff and Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) aid workers are preparing to cross into the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo carrying the precious aid. A six-hour truce between the Syrian government and anti-government forces enabled UNHCR Syria and SARC to deliver medicine, medical supplies and winter clothing as we'll as food supplies from the World Food Programme to more than 7,000 people in the hard-to-access Bustan Al-Qasr, Al-Ansari, Al-Firdos, Al-Sukari and Mwasalat neighborhoods of Syria's second largest city Aleppo. This cross line mission was carried out for the first time since last October. 45 carts were used to transport the aid from UNHCR trucks at the Bustan Al Qasr crossing point and then pulled across the frontline. It took several trips to complete the operation. Eastern Aleppo has suffered particularly badly since the Syria crisis began in March 2011, but despite the fighting it is still home to an estimated 600,000 people./ UNHCR/B.Diab/ March 2015

UNHCR maintains strategic partnerships with more than 900 partners including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governmental institutions and United Nations agencies. We entrust about 40 per cent of our annual expenditure to partners for undertaking programmes or projects to provide protection and solutions to people forced to flee.

We place great importance on continuously improving collaborations with partners, particularly promoting national partners as first responders in emergency operations.

UNHCR has been working with NGOs since we first began helping the forcibly displaced in the early 1950s. As our work and size grew to cope with emerging refugee crises in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, especially in Africa, Asia and Central America, so did our ties with a wide range of newly formed humanitarian and refugee-related NGOs.

In 2007, UNHCR adopted the Global Humanitarian Platform's Principles of Partnership that set out common standards of equality, transparency, complementarity and a results-oriented approach among all humanitarian groups. We integrated the Principles of Partnership in to our 'Framework for Implementing with Partners' as an institutional approach to collaborative partnerships.

The Annual Consultation with NGOs includes a range of national and international NGOs from around the world. It provides an important forum for NGOs and states to network, dialogue and exchange views with UNHCR as equal partners – an approach that NGOs welcome.

"The UNHCR has had the most excellent relations with the voluntary agencies. Their work is in a true sense of the term indispensable and invaluable for refugees”

Dr. Van Heuven Goedhart, The first High Commissioner for Refugees, 1954

Today, we rely heavily on NGOs to implement a wide range of projects, including aid distribution, protection, logistics, shelter, health, water, sanitation, nutrition and education projects.

Partners interested to collaborate with UNHCR are invited to register in the Partner Portal, an interactive tool established for enhanced communication between UNHCR and our partners.