ABSTRACT
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, and would 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.
