60 Years in Photos
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo_8.jpg)
UNHCR's first task in 1951 was to help an estimated 1 million mainly European civilians effected by World War I.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-2_7.jpg)
When the Hungarian uprising erupted in 1956, UNHCR faced its first post-war emergency, helping more than 200,000 people.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-3_7.jpg)
Africa's first modern refugee crisis occurred in the late 1950s during Algeria's independence struggle against France.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-5_8.jpg)
Independent African states welcomed hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the chaos of independence struggles.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-6_7.jpg)
The flight of 10 million Bengalis to India in 1971 was the most dramatic exodus of the 20th century.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-7_6.jpg)
In 1974, 400,000 people became homeless during clashes between Greek and Turkish communities in Cyprus.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-8_4.jpg)
The flight of Vietnamese refugees began after the fall of Saigon to North Vietnam forces in 1975. An estimated 3 million.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-9_2.jpg)
In the late 1970s, Thailand became the country of first asylum for refugees from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-10_1.jpg)
A cycle of repression and violence engulfed Central America in the 1980s and more than 300,000 people.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-12_1.jpg)
The exodus of more than 6 million Afghans started in 1979. People fled to such sites as the Ghazi Refugee Village in Pakistan.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-13_0.jpg)
Drought and war resulted in a massive influx of Ethiopians into Sudan during the 1980s and tens of thousands of people die.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-17_0.jpg)
By late 1991 nearly 750,000 Somalis were sheltering in Ethiopia's Hararghe region and the need for wood became a serious problem.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-19_0.jpg)
After years of exile and a 13-month repatriation operation completed in 1993, tens of thousands of Cambodians began a new life.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-20_0.jpg)
Some of the refugees originating from Bhutan who ended up staying in seven camps in eastern Nepal. This picture was taken in 1992.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-21.jpg)
War and displacement ripped through West Africa in the 1990s. More than 800,000 Liberians fled their homeland in the early 1990s.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-22.jpg)
War in the Balkans in the 1990s displaced 3 million people and 8,000 men and boys from the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-23.jpg)
The 1994 genocide in Rwanda triggered a massive exodus into neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-24.jpg)
The crisis in Africa's Great Lakes region also involved Burundi where 270,000 Rwandans sought safety.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-25.jpg)
At least 20,000 people were killed, a half million people were displaced and 60,000 civilians fled to Afghanistan.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-26.jpg)
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, conflict erupted in several areas of the former empire.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-27.jpg)
Within days of NATO's air strikes against Serb positions in 1999, nearly 1 million civilians fled or were forced into exile.
![UNHCR History Refugee War Humanitarian](https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20200208084731im_/https://www.unhcr.or.th/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_thumb/photo-28.jpg)
Refugees began flooding back into Kosovo virtually as quickly as they had left, but many returned to scenes of utter destruction.