UNHCR Goodwill Envoys Visit Camps for Darfur Refugees 

Company: UNHCR

Age Range: Middle school to high school

Does NOT Include Teaching Materials

Topic: Racism and Human Rights

Subject Areas: Human rights, Nationalism, Racism, Immigration, Persecution and War, Government, Social Studies, History, Freedom

Running Time and Sections: 1 program—about 6 minutes

Alex’s Review:

When one thinks of refugee camps, his/her thoughts flow directly to the displaced people’s situation. Of course, this train of thought is natural and expected because one cannot even imagine how those people must feel. However, not much thought is given to how the host countries and villages deal with the tremendous amount of people that flock there for safety. The UNHCR devotes a large portion of its services to helping these villages as well, by building schools or other necessary facilities to help ease the burden.

Through this short video, the UNHCR can describe the situations at certain refugee camps in Darfur and explain the tremendously important role the UNHCR plays by helping these refugees, considering how much violence takes place in Darfur because of civil unrest. The video also describes the different approaches that the UNHCR takes to finding solutions for the refugees’ situations. Much like most of the UNHCR videos, a large focus of the video is on how various people have dealt with the transition to a refugee status.

I would not recommend this video as a sole source for a lesson or topic, but rather as a supplement to another broader discussion. This video offers a new way of looking at refugee camps, and allows the audience to see the role of UNHCR envoys, but not much else is shown.