Top story:  Out in the cold:  Migrants and asylum seekers find life increasingly hard in Calais.  Sabir Mohammed* woke up soaked and chilled to the bone. His only protection against the freezing rain and cutting wind blowing off the English Channel had been a blanket donated by a French charity, but the rain poured all night and the blanket soon turned into a wet spongy mass.  

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21 January  UNHCR uses London tube to raise awareness.  UNHCR is running ads in the London Underground to raise awareness for the global protection and assistance needs of refugees. 

20 January  UNHCR reiterates strong commitment to help humanitarian effort in Haiti. The UN refugee agency on Tuesday reiterated strong commitment to back up and support the broader humanitarian effort to address the massive and urgent needs in Haiti.

14 January UN refugee agency ready to assist in response to Haiti earthquake.  UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said on Wednesday his agency is ready to assist in the international response to this week's devastating earthquake in Haiti.

12 January You can't grow crops in asphalt:  displaced Colombians struggle in the city.  About 80 per cent of Colombia's more than 3 million internally displaced people live in towns and cities.

08 January  Celebrities set off for the top of Kilimanjaro to highlight water shortages, raise funds for UNHCR and others. Celebrities from the entertainment field, including actors Jessica Biel and Emile Hirsch, are climbing 19,340-foot Mount Kilimanjaro to raise awareness about global shortages of drinking water and to raise money for UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies.

04 January  Restoring damaged homes for Iraqi returnees and internally displaced people.  UNHCR's emergency shelter programme has rehabilitated more than 10,000 shelters and aims to double this figure in 2010.

14 December   UNHCR seeking access to returned Lao Hmong. The UN refugee agency is seeking access to Lao Hmong who were forcibly returned to Laos from Thailand earlier this week.

10 December UNHCR chief opens international meeting in Geneva on urban refugees.  More than 300 UNHCR partners attend High Commissioner’s Dialogue, which this year focuses on problems faced by refugees and internally displaced in urban areas.  

09 December  Urban refugees struggle to make ends meet in South Africa. Telmore Mutinhima struggles to sleep on his grimy, threadbare mattress on an early South African morning. It's his most treasured possession – it's his only possession.

07 December  Urban refugees: Trying to get by in the city. The iconic image of refugees is row upon row of white tents in a sprawling emergency camp. But the reality is that only one-third of the world's 10.5 million refugees now live in camps.

03 December  16 days of Activism: The forgotten victims of conflict in the Congo. Twenty-eight year-old widow Kahindo is lucky to be alive after being attacked and abused by armed men while fleeing her village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country with one of the highest rates of rape in the world.

02 December   UNHCR launches programme to help 200,000 vulnerable Afghans survive the winter. The UN refugee agency on Tuesday began distributing blankets, sweaters, jerry cans and bags of charcoal to 1,500 of the neediest people in Kabul as part of a countrywide initiative to help some 200,000 vulnerable Afghans cope with the winter.