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
UNHCR Global AI Approach: Vision
Global Not Applicable
UNHCR’s AI Approach provides a strategic framework for using artificial intelligence in humanitarian contexts.
Rooted in human rights and humanitarian principles, it aims to improve outcomes for forcibly displaced and stateless people through responsible, inclusive, and transparent AI deployment.
What safeguards are in place to ensure ethical AI use?
UNHCR’s AI Approach is a model for ethical innovation in humanitarian work. It ensures that technology serves people, not the other way around, delivering faster, fairer, and more effective support to those in need.
What safeguards are in place to ensure ethical AI use?
- Ethical and human rights-based. This foundation ensures that AI adoption strengthens protection outcomes while safeguarding the rights and dignity of displaced and stateless populations
- Embrace AI responsibility by design. Maintaining the integrity of AI-assisted processes is essential to upholding the trust placed in UNHCR and ensuring institutional accountability.
- Champion people-centred AI. Human centricity is being embedded into the core of all AI initiatives, through the testing of new products with communities, designing different human centered processes, a commitment to shifting power dynamics, or adapting proven approaches to fit local needs and realities.
- Ensure robust internal governance. UNHCR’s governance of AI is being built on existing institutional processes and established decision-making structures.
- Foster meaningful partnerships. UNHCR’s engagement in AI is driven by strong collaboration across a diverse range of partners, including governments, international institutions and other UN agencies.
How does UNHCR advocate and engage on responsible AI?
- UNHCR is actively engaging in global conversations to promote the ethical use of artificial intelligence in humanitarian contexts.
- The organization advocates for AI systems that are rights-based, inclusive, transparent and accountable.
Differentially Private Synthetic Microdata: New Privacy Technologies for Better Data Sharing
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.
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/SolutionsRiMAP VLA: A Virtual Legal Assistant for Scaling Humanitarian Law and Policy Analysis on the UNHCR Rights Mapping and Analysis Tool (RIMAP)
Global Not Applicable
UNHCR developed a Virtual Legal Assistant (VLA) powered by Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) into its Rights Mapping and Analysis Platform (RiMAP). This platform support UNHCR country editors by efficiently collecting, processing, and analyzing vast amounts of legal documents across all UN countries and territories. This enables legal research and analysis processes, including extraction, translation, summarization, and drafting.
Once data is manually collected and indexed in a library accessible to the AI assistant, a first draft of responses to questions can be generated. This draft is created by extracting relevant paragraphs, translating them, and summarizing the content to produce an accurate response with sources. This draft serves as the foundation for the legal analysis that country editors can verify and further edit.
The library of sources includes government publications, laws and regulations, policies, academic research, and UNHCR reports. By leveraging AI, the VLA allows UNHCR to significantly reduce the time spent on legal research and drafting, ensuring the timely and comprehensive completion of RiMAP within a reduced timeframe.
The VLA is an AI-powered chatbot that utilizes resources contained within RiMAP. This public-facing chatbot provides easily accessible and user-friendly information on the rights of forcibly displaced and stateless persons. This initiative marks a significant step towards making legal data more accessible to a diverse range of stakeholders, including universities, legal aid organizations, governments, development actors, civil society groups, and, most importantly, forcibly displaced and stateless persons themselves.