A visibly frustrated Gutteres told reporters "it was terrible for humanitarian workers not to be able to fully deliver effective humanitarian protection to IDP’s in Darfur."
UNHCR, which has 200 staff in Sudan’s war - torn western Darfur region, estimates the conflict between the Sudanese government backed Arab militias (the Janjaweed)- and black African rebel groups has resulted in over 350,000 deaths from disease, starvation and violence, nearly 2 million internally displaced persons (IDP’s) living in squalid camps, and 200,000 refugees who fled to neighbouring Chad.
"We are limited in our action and that limit translates itself in an even worse situation for the people we care for," Gutteres, a former Prime Minister of Portugal, said.
He said the displaced people in Darfur are "victims of very substantial violations of their rights in a way that is shocking for everyone."
The UN refugee chief voiced concerns the insecurity in Darfur is spreading to Chad, and the Central African Republic, and creating a very difficult situation in the border areas.
This, he said, is making it very hard for the agency to guarantee the civilian character of the camps in Chad.
Gutteres told HRT the current international force on the ground "is not able to guarantee security."
He said the efforts by the UN secretary general, Mr Kofi Annan, and others, to create the conditions for a UN force to be deployed in Darfur, is a must, in order and to be able to provide credible security, and to allow humanitarian action to be more effective, than the situation today.
Turning to other issues, Gutteres also voiced concerns about the blurring by governments of the distinction between migration flows and genuine refugees -forced to move due to persecution or conflict.
"It is true we are witnessing more and more mixed flows of populations in which the majority are migrants, namely legal migrants, but some people in fact need international protection, because they are refugees or asylum seekers, women victims of trafficking or accompanied minors," he said.
In the present environment "where so much intolerance prevails in so many societies," its important to make sure, he said " that people in need of protection are effectively granted protection."
He went on to stress that measures aimed at curbing illegal migration should not "affect the right of refugees and the right of asylum seekers to have physical access to asylum procedures and a fair treatment of their claims."
Guttteres said UNHCR has been "very worried" about the confusion between migration and asylum and the difficulties the public has in clearly making that distinction.
He also castigated populist campaigns - both by politicians and the media - that allow the confusion to spread and which put pressure on institutions for more restrictive asylum policies.
But he was quick to clarify that the situation is not the same everywhere and noted there are even cases where asylum procedures are improving.
In Europe, he said the asylum system being built " is not the same everywhere, "but that in some countries there is a tendency for new measures to "correspond to a minimum common denominator and not maintain the high levels of protection that were a tradition in European societies."
"Democracies have the obligation to keep asylum as an institution that cannot be undermined," Gutteres said.
Gutters also flagged his concerned about the situation in Colombia where there are now more than 2 million IDP’s, and hundreds of thousands of refugees in Ecuador, Venezuela, and also Panama and Costa Rica.
Finally, asked about North Koreans moving into China, Gutteres said, that "even if the majority do so as illegal migrants" if they are sent back they risk "very heavy persecution forms and so become refugees in situ."
He said there is an on-going dialogue with Chinese authorities and others for this principle to be respected.
The key question, Gutteres said, "is to avoid people to be sent back to North Korea against their will in conditions where they might be victims of persecution."