World Refugee Year Collection

This is a small collection which consists primarily of memorabilia and publications produced by various World Refugee Year campaigns and events, representing some of the ways in which World Refugee Year was organised and commemorated at the time. The collection also includes a file of papers relating to the planning of the commemorative stamp campaign, and some more recent material produced by Peter Gatrell over the course of his research.

World Refugee Year was an awareness raising and fundraising campaign organised by the United Nations from 1959-1960, in response to the growth in numbers of displaced populations in the first half of the 20th century.

The idea first came from a group of UK-based journalists who had previously reported on refugee crises internationally: Timothy Raison, Christopher Chataway, Trevor Philpott and Colin Jones. The idea gained momentum, sparking interest among representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the UK Foreign Office until the resolution to support a World Refugee Year was passed by the UN in 1958.

The campaign intended primarily to fundraise for refugee causes, as well as to support long term solutions for supporting refugees such as repatriation, resettlement or integration. World Refugee Year also aimed to raise awareness of and shape public opinion on refugee causes. It involved a number of different initiatives, including an international commemorative stamp campaign, celebrity endorsements, documentaries and special publications. It encouraged the activism and involvement of the general public, particularly young people and children, as well as governments and humanitarian focussed organisations.

This collection arrived at the library in no particular order, alongside a list of all the items contained within it. However for this catalogue the material contemporary to World Refugee Year and Peter Gatrell's research papers have been put into separate groupings. This is an artificial structure which does not necessarily reflect the collection's previous arrangement, but has been put in place to distinguish the material produced at the time of World Refugee Year accumulated by Peter Gatrell from the more recent items that were produced as a result of his research.

The collection is open to any accredited reader.

The collection includes material which is subject to the Data Protection Act 2018. Under the Act 2018 (DPA), The University of Manchester Library (UML) holds the right to process personal data for archiving and research purposes. In accordance with the DPA, UML has made every attempt to ensure that all personal and sensitive personal data has been processed fairly, lawfully and accurately. Users of the archive are expected to comply with the Data Protection Act 2018, and will be required to sign a form acknowledging that they will abide by the requirements of the Act in any further processing of the material by themselves.

Open parts of this collection, and the catalogue descriptions, may contain personal data about living individuals. Some items in this collection may be closed to public inspection in line with the requirements of the DPA. Restrictions/closures of specific items will be indicated in the catalogue.

This collection was donated to the University of Manchester Library Special Collections by Peter Gatrell in 2022.

Photocopies and photographic copies of material in the archive can be supplied for private study purposes only, depending on the condition of the documents.

A number of items within the archive remain within copyright under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988; it is the responsibility of users to obtain the copyright holder's permission for reproduction of copyright material for purposes other than research or private study.

Prior written permission must be obtained from the Library for publication or reproduction of any material within the archive. Please contact the Head of Special Collections, John Rylands Library, 150 Deansgate, Manchester, M3 3EH.

This collection was accumulated by Peter Gatrell, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Manchester, over the course of researching for his book Free World? The Campaign to Save the World's Refugees, 1956-1963

The United Nations Archive in New York holds archives relating to the central organisation of campaign. World Refugee Year events were organised at a local level by committees, the archives of which can sometimes be found in local authority archives and school archives.

Gatrell, Peter. Free World? The Campaign to Save the World's Refugees 1956-1963. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.