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The Norwegian Refugee Council is an independent humanitarian organisation helping people forced to flee. We work in crises across more than 30 countries, where we help save lives and rebuild futures.

Latest news

Yemen |

Reopening of Yemen's Sana'a airport for medical patients

NRC Secretary General Jan Egeland's reaction to Saudi-led coalition's move to open Sana'a airport for medical patients.

Photo: Ingrid Prestetun/NRC - used in 'A demanding job' webstory
Somalia |

A demanding job

“When I see how much it means to those we help, I have no doubt that it's worth it.”

Because of the flood, canoes are the only way that get from one side of the neighborhood to another. Photo: Itunu Kuku/NRC
Central African Republic |

57,000 people affected by severe flooding in Central African Republic

More than 10,000 homes have been destroyed and already impoverished neighbourhoods are under water due to flooding caused by heavy rain in Central African Republic. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is calling for urgent funding to scale up the emergency response and help those affected.

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Longreads

Currently, Suleiman works together with other fishermen to provide a living for his family. But it is not easy to find enough work. He has a wife, 7 children and 1 grandchild. He works for a daily fee between 3000 to 5000 Yemeni Riyals, and he needs many things for his family to live as he and his family left everything behind when they fled.
Feature
Yemen
How fishing communities are fighting back
Feature
Europe
Hour of reckoning for European refugee policy
Feature
A sixteen-year-old’s flight from IS-group to Norway
Perspective
How NRC makes a difference
A safe place to call home
Rachel is twenty-years-old and lives with her parents, siblings and her 2-year-old daughter (name: Guylaine). She became pregnant when she was 17 with a boy from her village, but he disappeared when he revealed that she was expecting his child. Since August 2018, Rachel has been attending the NRC tailoring class in Kitchanga. These courses will last six months. After training, her dream is to start her own tailoring shop and to be able to give her daughter an education to in the future. She loves tailoring and she has made dresses for herself and her daughter. Before she was selected for the NRC tailoring class, she had nothing to do and now she is very happy to be able to attend the classes. Rachel is from the village Ngingwe, Masisi territory, which is six kilometers from Kitchanga in the North Kivu province. She and her family had to flee during the night four years ago when the clashes broke out between armed groups. They travelled the whole night and reached Kitchanga in the morning. Rachel was very afraid when she had to flee and during this violence where she lost her grandmother and uncle. She misses them a lot. Rachel is still constantly afraid, and does not want to go back home until it’s safe. Since the attack, some people from the village have been back home to pick up food and their belongings, but they cannot sleep there, as the situation is still unsafe. Rachel has not been back home in Ngingwe since she and her family fled their home. Rachel does not feel safe in Kitchanga either. She is scared that armed groups will enter Kitchanga and take over the town in the future. She does not feel well about being a displaced youth in Kitchanga. It is a big challenge for her because she is sometimes neglected. Since she also a single mother, people austersize her. There’s also a lack of food in Kitchanga, and Rachel does not have enough money to pay school fees, therefore she dropped out of school after second grade in secondary school. Rachel also struggles to pay for health care and clothes for her daughter. After tailoring class, she usually helps her mother to do some household activities, for instance, fetching water and cooking dinner. Photo: Ingrid Prestetun/NRC
Perspective
The forgotten youth
Jumana Murad, 47, in her bare rented apartment. In just over seven years, Jumana, who lives in Al Shati refugee camp near Gaza City, lost four of her children. Juliana died at age 17 in 2012 after she accidentally took the wrong medication for a severe stomach ache. Just over a year later, Lina, 14 at the time, died when she fell from the fourth floor of a building. Jumana says her son, Qusai, inhaled smoke from Israeli shells fired during the first major round of hostilities, which ran from December 2008 to January 2009, and developed respiratory problems that contributed to his death in 2014 at age 6. This year, Jumana grieved the loss of her 19-year-old daughter, Jasmin, who died from complications of kidney failure. Medical bills have left the family in debt. All told, the family owes 2,900 NIS (US$825) for groceries, prescriptions, and rent. Unpaid promissory notes to landlords have landed Jumana’s husband, Adel, a tailor by profession, in prison since July 2018. After losing his job at a factory in Israel, he worked as a cleaner in Gaza until health problems resulted in too many absences and he was let go. According to the Ministry of Public Works and Housing, some 2,000 households faced the risk of eviction in 2018 over inability to pay rent. As of August this year, the Ministry of Social Development pegged the number of families under eviction risk at 9,356. Evictions have become routine for Jumana and her family over the past two years. They have found themselves often sleeping on the street or at the port several times. “When we were in the tent in the street, we felt very embarrassed whenever people walked past us,” said Jumana. “We tried to cover ourselves with plastic and carton sheets. We did not have water, so we could not shower, and our poor personal hygiene caused us skin problems.” While in the tent and on the street, the family relied on the owner of a nearby restaurant and goodwill from other people for food. Jumana’s boys also scavenged the local market for leftovers near spoiled vegetables to complement their diet of bread and tea. All five of Jumana’s surviving children dropped out of school because of the number of times they have been forced to move after getting evicted from their home, as well as lack of funds for school fees, uniforms, and transportation. Ali and Mohammad, 15, completed first grade only; their siblings Jenin, 17, and Saed, 16, made it to second grade, and Diana graduated from fifth grade. The family receives 1,600 NIS (US$453) in cash assistance from the Ministry of Social Development every three months, which are often delayed or incomplete, and UNRWA food vouchers, but often uses them to repay grocery debts. In fact, more than half of the households surveyed by NRC resorted to selling the assistance received. Since May, Jumana’s family has received cash-for-rent from NRC, as part of a project funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to support 280 vulnerable households to stave off the threat of eviction. “We are terrified of living on the street after the cash-for-rent assistance from NRC finishes,” said Jumana. “We always think about what we are going to do after the end of the project. I dream about having one room for myself one day.” The loss of the children, “one after the other," as Jumana says, has taken its toll, physically and psychologically, on the surviving family members. Adel, and Jumana’s oldest son, Ali, both have psychological problems and require expensive prescriptions. Ali, was only 15 when he had witnessed his sister plummet to her death. A four-month stint in a psychiatric hospital barely scratched the surface, and he increasingly turned to drugs and crime. Now 21, he has been serving a seven-year sentence for numerous robbery convictions since 2017. While the prison has granted Ali furlough on weekends, he has used the time, together with his family, to participate in the Great March of Return mass protests on Fridays along Gaza’s perimeter fence with Israel. Without hope or prospects for the future, Jumana says they take advantage of the free transportation to attend the demonstrations for a sense of stress release from their daily lives. Unfortunately, Ali, his sister and father were unable to escape injury. Ali was shot twice in the leg, in separate incidents in 2018, sustaining serious nerve and artery damage. His latest injury occurred in January this year, when a rubber-coated steel bullet fractured his nose. Diana, 18, sustained shrapnel wounds to her left arm and thigh in 2018. In March this year, a tear gas canister struck her in the right shoulder. While Diana’s father looked for her amid the crowds, he fell to the ground with a bullet wound to the leg. Complications arising from diabetes and kidney problems have stalled his recovery. Photo taken on 21 August 2019 Photo: Ahmed Mashharawi/NRC
Perspective
Palestine
Mothers in Gaza face eviction threats
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Opinions

The refugee camp in Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh, is built on sandy hills where there once used to be forests. The hilly landscape is a challenging area to house hundreds of thousands of refugees.
Bangladesh|Myanmar |

Myanmar’s Rohingya crisis is moving backwards. Here’s how to resolve it

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) distributed food (maize, lentils, oil and corn soya blend) to more than 7,100 people in Ngop. While Leer and Mayendit, both also in Unity state, have been recently declared in famine, Ngop is also in high risk. The food distribution is part of a Rapid Response Mission coordinated and funded by the World Food Programme (WFP) to mitigate this risk.
Netherlands |

New Dutch terror bill must not target aid workers

Norwegian Refugee Council's Secretary General Jan Egeland on the border between El Salvador and Guatemala.
El Salvador|Guatemala|Honduras|USA |

US denial of Central America’s crisis will backfire

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NORCAP: Global provider of expertise

About NORCAP

NORCAP is a global provider of expertise to the humanitarian, development and peacebuilding sectors. We build partnerships with international organisations and national actors to protect lives, rights and livelihoods.

(Photo: Ingrid Prestetun/NRC)

Partners and donors

NORCAP works with partners on national, regional and international levels in order to contribute effectively to humanitarian operations. We provide expertise in various fields to support to a wide range of organisations and countries through the deployment of expert personnel.

Mohammed Arouki is seconded from NORCAP to support UN´s response to the crisis in Greece. Here he is distributing food to refugees who have just arrived in Chios together with Nicholas Panteloukas from NRC. Photo: Tiril Skarstein, NRC

Our expertise

NORCAP has a pool of more than 1,000 professionals recruited to meet the changing demands of a wide range of partners, situations and crises.

More than a number

Perspective
The hard life in displacement:
Young mothers in war-torn Yemen

Angela

Angela, 32, has six children to feed, but can now put food on the table, because of new water pumps that we've installed in her village.

Amo Stella

Amo Stella (22) is #morethananumber.

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Our activities in the field

Camp management
Education
Food security
Legal assistance (ICLA)
Shelter
Water and sanitation