Safeguard human rights
Safeguard human rights
UNHCR advocates and works with governments to strengthen laws and ensure displaced and stateless people can access basic rights and services.
Advocating for the rights of people forced to flee and those denied a nationality
Citizens normally look to their own governments to guarantee their human rights and physical security.
When people are forced to flee, it is often because they can no longer rely on their government to protect them – or because their own government is persecuting them.
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, works to improve asylum laws and ensure displaced and stateless people can access basic rights and services, including the right to seek safety, the right to health care and the right to a nationality.
Text and media 6
Advocacy
We advocate for and work with governments to change laws and practices to better protect displaced people, creating change on national, regional, and global levels. This helps ensure refugees, asylum-seekers and other forcibly displaced persons can access support, get documents, go to school, work and exercise other rights.
Bringing about positive changes on national, regional and global levels can take years, but we accomplish it with the help of lawyers, judges, civil society organizations, politicians and students.
Text and media 10
Ending statelessness
We also work to secure nationality for people who are stateless by advocating for change in laws and practices. One of the most important ways to achieve this is through nationality laws that allow children to become citizens of the country where they were born if they would otherwise be stateless. Birth registration is also critical. Likewise, we make sure people do not lose their nationality through changes to laws, when new states emerge or when there are changes to national borders.
Text and media 9
Advice on mixed-migration movements
We engage with and advise on broader and mixed-migration issues that affect refugees asylum-seekers, internally displaced people and stateless people, along with migrants and other people on the move, such as human trafficking and protection at sea.
Text and media 9
Access to Public health care
Good health is an essential requirement for refugees to be able to rebuild their lives. UNHCR works with governments and partners to provide emergency health care, improve local health services accessed by refugees and host communities, and advocate for refugees to be included in national health systems and plans.
Text and media 11
Protection
To protect people forced to flee, UNHCR promotes accession to the 1951 Convention, supports States to register displaced people and provide them with documentation and supports refugee status determination, which is the administrative process that decides if a person seeking international protection is considered a refugee under international, regional or national law.
Please consider donating today
Your gift can help protect someone forced to flee their home due to conflict or persecution.