Originally published in TEACH Magazine, 75 Years of the United Nations Special Issue, 2020
By Meagan Gillmore
Few institutions have been as instrumental in shaping Canada today as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Yet when the organization began in 1950, its mandate was for only a few years.
“There was this idea at the very beginning that, somehow, this refugee crisis was going to sort itself out,” explains Michael Casasola, the UNHCR’s senior resettlement officer in Canada. Its early focus was helping people who became refugees after the Second World War. Now, the inter-governmental organization assists people around the world who have been forced to flee their homes: including refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people, stateless people, and returnees.
Meagan Gillmore is a freelance writer in Toronto, ON.
