About UNHCR
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is a global organization dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people.Activities by UNHCR
Improved household surveys through semi-automated mapping
Africa, Asia and the Pacific CameroonPakistanSouth SudanThis project enhances data collection for refugee surveys by integrating UNHCR's registration data with high-resolution satellite imagery and spatial modeling techniques. By leveraging data science and AI-driven analysis, it creates more precise sampling frames to identify and survey displaced populations outside of formal settlements.
Activity Type Research/Reports/AssessmentsAI Tools/SolutionsAgentic AI: a virtual assistant to help refugee entrepreneurs create their business plans in Paraguay
Latin America and the Caribbean Paraguay
Challenge: UNHCR focuses on livelihoods and economic inclusion as a pathway to protection, dignity, self-reliance, and support their integration into their host communities. UNHCR supports its partners and governments counterparts by:
- Providing seed capital for small businesses and orientation to access the labor market.
- Advocating with financial institutions for refugees to access banking services.
- Providing training programs and digital tools to help refugees develop viable business plans, particularly for those without digital skills
Solution: Co-designed with refugees, UNHCR Paraguay developed an AI-powered business planning assistant to help refugees and asylum-seekers transform ideas into sustainable businesses for applying to seed capital funding. The tool provides a guided journey from identifying customers and market strategy to calculating financial viability and creating an actionable roadmap. The tool incorporates Paraguay’s legal framework for business registration, guiding users through steps such as entity selection, tax ID requirements, and licensing. It offers a structured journey from market analysis to financial viability and an actionable roadmap.
Key Features:
-24/7 availability, breaking technical barriers and providing real-time projections.
-Legal compliance guidance tailored to Paraguayan regulations.
-Developed by MCO Argentina with support from the UNHCR Data Innovation Fund and regional experts.
Impact: Transforming refugee talent into economic development: strengthening dignity and autonomy. Provides personalized insights and future projections for strategic decisions for refugee entrepreneurs. Empowers refugees with dignity and autonomy, reducing aid dependency. Automated business plan evaluation and real-time reporting and reducing processing times for livelihood grants provided by UNHCR and partners.
New Privacy Technologies for Better Data Sharing: Differentially Private Synthetic Microdata
Global Not Applicable
As part of its commitment to promoting open data and staying at the forefront of privacy technologies, UNHCR undertook a project to explore the use of synthetic data for some of the Microdata Library datasets.
Synthetic datasets are generated using randomly created dummy values that preserve the statistical properties of the original data, making them a valuable resource for research and analysis. Data security is ensured through differential privacy, a state-of-the-art privacy-enhancing technology that provides a rigorous mathematical framework for protecting sensitive information.
UNHCR found this methodology particularly beneficial when working with datasets that represent full enumerations rather than sample surveys. This approach was applied to registration data, a census-like collection that includes all displaced individuals registered with the organization, enabling its secure sharing on this platform.
Drawing from the experience gained in this project, UNHCR developed a practical guide to applying this methodology. The goal is to improve how humanitarian microdata can be shared in ways that preserve individual privacy while enabling high-utility insights.
Virtual Legal Assistant (VLA) for UNHCR Rights Mapping and Analysis Tool (RIMAP)
Global Not ApplicableUNHCR is integrating an internal Virtual Legal Assistant (VLA) powered by AI into its Rights Mapping and Analysis Platform (RiMAP). The VLA will process and analyze legal documents to facilitate legal data collection and policy analysis, and its functionality will be expanded to a chatbot to provide user-friendly legal information.
Activity Type AI Tools/SolutionsPolicy/Regulatory Guidance