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.
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.
GenAI Lab: internal GenAI-based policy assistants
Global Not Applicable
UNHCR has leveraged Microsoft Azure Open AI solutions to provide personalized chatbots and assistants for various internal use cases, including generating policies, plans, and summaries from internal documents, as well as translation and content generation.
At UNHCR, we use GenAI to accelerate, deepen and sustain our impact by creating value to our workforce (Azure OpenAI, Enterprise apps/ERP and beyond).
Internal Policy Assistants:
- Provides rapid, multilingual access to shared resources such as policies and documents.
- Delivers a user-friendly interface for querying and receiving real-time responses, instead of users looking into many places (e.g., intranet)
- Enhances staff productivity, speeds response times, and supports data-driven decision-making as part of broader digital transformation efforts
Global Early Warning System on Forced Displacement
Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States LuxembourgThis predictive analytics project harnesses nowcasting, forecasting, and machine learning to develop an early warning system that detects escalating risks of forced displacement and provides timely displacement forecasts before emergencies occur.
Activity Type AI Tools/SolutionsResearch/Reports/Assessments