The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) welcomes the Communication on Regional Protection Programmes issued by the European Commission, and its stated aim to ‘enhance the capacity of areas close to regions of origin to protect refugees’, and to help ‘create the conditions for durable solutions’, including through voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement. These activities go to the core of UNHCR’s mandate. (Quoted from text)