There are only about 20 countries that do resettlement in the world on a regular basis. About another dozen do it sometimes, on a non-predictable basis. Among the 20 countries, some of us have a formal arrangement with the United Nations wherein we agree to consider a certain number of people for emergency resettlement.
The UNHCR is caring for well over 10 million refugees. They refer between 80,000 to 100,000 refugees a year to the 20 countries who do resettlement, and out of those 80,000 to 100,000, they refer maybe about 300 as truly urgent. Canada has an arrangement whereby we will take up to 100 of those 300 to 400 urgent referrals. There are about four or five other countries that also have that.
So is it possible? Yes, we take referrals from the UNHCR for urgent protection, because it means that you are receiving specific people. It's a very complicated chain. You're talking about getting somebody out of a country very quickly in a few days. There are phone calls. It's a chain of command that goes from the country to us, to our doctors, to make sure the person is physically removed. We have an arrangement with our Canada Border Services Agency. That's where we come up with the number of 100 a year, because we can't tell Canada Border Services Agency to stop all of the hundreds of thousands of things they're doing.
It's a successful program. We are able to take people out within days or weeks, as opposed to months, but again it's a protocol that we have in place with the UNHCR.