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Press
Release..............................
UNESCAP News Services
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Date 17
June 2004
Press Release No: L/35/2004 (SG/SM/9368; OBV/4270; REF/1178)
Secretary-General, in World Refugee Day message,
notes key role of asylum countries, urges continued aid for
ressettlement efforts
This is the text of the message from Secretary-General
Kofi Annan to mark the observance on 20 June of World Refugee
Day:
For millions of refugees and displaced people
around the world, "home" is a place they have fled
from in fear for their lives, in a desperate attempt to find
safety. Home is also a place many despair of ever seeing again,
as they struggle to cope with the shattering enormity of losing
family, friends, possessions and everything familiar to them.
Amid the flight from conflict and persecution, in the tent cities
of refugee camps, and during the wait in unbearable uncertainty
to see what the future will hold, it is a refugee's most cherished
dream to return home and live in dignity and security. That
is why this year's World Refugee Day is dedicated to the theme,
"A Place to Call Home".
Over the past five decades, the office of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has helped more
than 50 million people uprooted by the turmoil of conflict to
find a home and start their lives anew. But of the 17 million
people under the agency's protection today, the overwhelming
majority desperately want to go back to their own homes. Last
year alone, an estimated 1.1 million refugees returned home.
In an extraordinary expression of the powerful desire to return
to even a devastated home, more than three million Afghan refugees
and displaced have returned since 2002. Refugees from Angola,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, C?te d'Ivoire, Iraq, Liberia,
Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Somalia are also deciding to return
in large numbers. And there are hopeful prospects that a further
two million refugees and displaced in Africa will be able to
go home.
But there are also refugees who can never return.
For them, the solution is either integration in countries of
first asylum or, if that is not possible, resettlement in a
third country where they can restart their lives. Throughout
this process, we should not forget the generosity of asylum
countries in providing shelter to refugees in their time of
need. It is that spirit of generosity and sustained support
that is needed from the international community if we are to
succeed in giving the millions of refugees and displaced of
this world a place to call home. On this World Refugee Day,
let us rededicate ourselves to that mission.
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