No international organization has had such an unpromising beginning as UNHCR.1 The first UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Gerrit Jan van Heuven Goedhart (1951-56), had a mandate to protect refugees and to provide solutions to refugee problems, but he had only three years to demonstrate the Office’s relevance and practically no funds with which to carry out his work. Determined to keep UNHCR a strictly limited agency and to restrict their own obligations to costly refugee resettlement, states provided very little financial support to UNHCR in its early days. The United States did not fund UNHCR until 1955 and chose instead to generously fund rival humanitarian agencies, including its own refugee office, the US Escapee Program, that were closely aligned to American foreign policy interests. From its inception, UNHCR tried to overcome these financial and operational restrictions. The High Commissioner realized that without a bigger budget the Office would not be able to fulfill its refugee protection mandate, would enjoy little, if any, autonomy, andwould exercise limited influence in the international system. From the very beginning, therefore, UNHCR’s challenge as an organization has been to demonstrate its relevance in changing conditions while preserving its original mandate of protecting refugees and finding a solution to their plight. Not only did van Heuven Goedhart have few resources at his disposal

but the Office was also confronted with a number of legal limits on its

activities. UNHCR’s mandate only allowed the Office to offer protection to those who were refugees as “a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951.” The Statute also precluded the organization from conferring refugee status on an entire national population fleeing a repressive government but instead could confer such status only on individuals whose claims had to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. People fleeing from international or civil conflicts, economic hardship, famines or natural disasters were excluded from UNHCR’s protection. Moreover, the 1951 Convention refugee definition contained both geographical and temporal restrictions. It was intended to be used by the Western states in dealing with arrivals from Eastern Europe, and consequently reflected the international politics of the early Cold War period. Perhaps most significantly, the scope and extent of the authority of

the High Commissioner were further limited by the importance attached by states to the international norms of sovereignty and non-intervention in the domestic affairs of states. UNHCR’s Statute restricted the authority of the High Commissioner to assist refugees who had crossed international borders and expressly forbade the High Commissioner from involving himself in political activities.2 Because the causes of refugee flows were considered to fall outside the organization’s humanitarian and “non-political”mandate set out in its Statute, UNHCRwas reluctant to become involved in human rights monitoring. UNHCRofficials were also inclined to avoid raising delicate political questions when dealing with host governments for fear of overstepping their mandate or damaging relations with governments, most of whom would consider such intrusions to be interference in their internal affairs. During most of the Cold War, the norms of sovereignty and non-intervention limited the scope of UNHCR activity and, with few exceptions, restricted the Office to work in countries of asylum rather than countries of origin. Throughout the ColdWar, UNHCR generally approached the refugee

problem in a manner which can be characterized as reactive, exileoriented, and refugee-centric.3 The Office primarily worked with people after they had fled across borders to neighboring countries where they required protection and assistance. UNHCR staff concentrated their activities on assisting refugees in camps or settlements and negotiating with host and donor governments for support, and paid little attention to preventing or averting refugee movements. It placed primary responsibility for solving refugee problems on states that hosted refugees rather than on states that caused refugees to flee. Hence, UNHCR emphasized local settlement and resettlement rather than repatriation as solutions for refugee problems in its early years.