The 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising next week marks a
milestone both for refugee crises around the world and IOM.

The first post-WWII refugee crisis, the Hungarian Uprising which
began on 23 October 1956 with anti-Soviet student protests that led
to Soviet tanks being deployed on the streets of Budapest, resulted
in an exodus of refugees into neighbouring Austria and
Yugoslavia.

The crisis stirred a new sense of international solidarity on
refugee resettlement in the Cold War era with about 200,000 people
given the chance for a new life in another country. Among the first
countries offering to take Hungarian refugees were Australia,
Chile, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Netherlands,
Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. It was also the first
inter-organizational refugee operation in the post-war period.

For IOM, then known as the Intergovernmental Committee for
European Migration (ICEM), the Hungarian Uprising was also a
defining moment in the organization’s history. Created to
deal with the aftermath of human displacement and unemployment in
post-war Europe, the exodus of about 200,000 Hungarian refugees
meant the organization had a real-time crisis on its hands.

When, together with UNHCR, ICEM was asked by Austria to help
with the influx of refugees, more than 10,000 people from all walks
of life with few belongings if any had already crossed the border
and by the end of November 1956, about 8,000 refugees were arriving
in Austria on a daily basis. Within a few months, Hungary lost a
large part of its intelligentsia, its students and skilled
workers.

ICEM was responsible for the coordination and arrangement of
travel to other countries for temporary asylum or permanent
resettlement, while UNHCR and the Red Cross took care of legal
protection issues and local humanitarian assistance, respectively.
This division of labour has provided a model for subsequent refugee
emergencies.

In order to minimize family separation and to gain a detailed
picture of the operation ahead, ICEM also registered the refugees.
In addition, it created hard fact profiles of the refugees, without
names or photos, which were sent to resettlement governments and
voluntary organizations.  These showed the refugees for what
they were: humans in need of human solutions. As a result, Sweden
for example, selected people with tuberculosis, while Australia
changed its selection criteria to take in many elderly people among
the 12,000 refugees it resettled.

By the end of 1959, ICEM had assisted in one way or another,
nearly 163,000 refugees.  It was not until 1978, during the
Indochinese refugee crisis, that the organization moved more
refugees in any one year than during the Hungarian crisis.

The expertise and experience gathered during this crisis came
during a formative period for the organization and set the seal for
what it did in the future.  Flexibility and speed of response
became trademarks and hundreds of thousands of people have since
been given the chance to start a new life around the world.

For photographs from the crisis, please go to: "paragraph-link-no-underline" href=
"http://www.imagelibrary.iom.int/search.asp?catalogue=historical"
target="_blank" title=
"">http://www.imagelibrary.iom.int/search.asp?catalogue=historical 

From the "Operation/Programme", drop-down menu, please
select "Hungarian Exodus”

For further information, please contact:

Tina Szabados

IOM Chief of Mission in Hungary

Tel: +361 472 25 00

E-mail: "mailto:tszabados@iom.int">tszabados@iom.int