United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
United Nations agency mandated to protect and support refugees
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to a third country. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and has 20,305 staff working in 136 countries as of December 2023.
Background
The League of Nations, founded in January 1920, was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. The following year it established the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, appointing Norwegian scientist Fridtjof Nansen as the first to hold the post.
After Nansen's death in 1930, the Nansen International Office for Refugees continued his work. This Office was replaced in 1938 by the appointment of a High Commissioner for Refugees. As refugees fled Nazi Germany, the League of Nations appointed James McDonald as High Commissioner for Refugees Coming from Germany. Facing strict global immigration limits, he helped resettle more than 80,000 refugees, mainly to Palestine. In 1935, McDonald resigned in protest at the League's failure to act against the persecution of Jews under the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped them of citizenship and basic rights. His office was replaced in 1938 by a new High Commissioner for Refugees.
“United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees” enters the record as united Nations agency mandated to protect and support refugees. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what United, Nations and High can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, United, Nations and High provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q132551. VIAF identifies the subject as 143665889. The Library of Congress control number is n81090356. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2023, 1920, 1930 and 1938.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees primary sources, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees archive and United research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.