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
Unlocking Artificial Intelligence’s Potential in Country of Origin Information (COI)
Global Not ApplicableUNHCR conducted research exploring the potential of AI in enhancing Country of Origin Information (COI) research. The research aims to leverage AI-driven tools to automate and improve data analysis, enabling researchers to process vast datasets quickly and accurately.
Activity Type Research/Reports/AssessmentsAI Enabled Mentorship Platform for Refugees
Africa KenyaSouth Sudan
Women Leader Bridge is an AI enabled mentorship platform developed as an activity under the UNHCR–Mastercard Foundation partnership to connect refugee women, youth, and refugee entrepreneurs with vetted professional mentors across Africa.
The platform aims to support economic inclusion, self-reliance, leadership development, career guidance, and refugee-led business growth through structured mentorship programmes.
The solution uses AI supported moderation and smart matching capabilities to pair mentees with mentors based on expertise, language, career interests, business focus, and pathway alignment. The platform also includes secure communication tools, scheduling functionality, progress tracking, impact reporting, and administrative oversight mechanisms.
The mentorship programme focuses on two pathways:
• Career and education mentorship for refugee youth and women seeking employment and professional development.
• Business mentorship for refugee entrepreneurs and refugee led businesses requiring support on strategy, leadership, operations, budgeting, and growth.
The platform has been designed with strong governance, safeguarding, and privacy controls including human oversight, AI moderation safeguards, encryption, audit trails, and GDPR aligned data protection measures.
The initial pilot phase focuses on Kenya and South Sudan, with potential for regional and global expansion .
Project Jetson
Africa Somalia
Project Jetson (2017-2021) was a predictive analytics experiment to discover, understand, and measure the specific push and pull factors that cause, indicate or exacerbate the forced displacement. Project Jetson gives UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations the potential to become more proactive in their contingency planning, emergency preparedness and response efforts, a transformation that could significantly improve on-the-ground relief services and more importantly the lives of those who are forcibly displaced.
Humanitarian challenge Drought exacerbating internal displacement in Somalia generated by protracted conflict.
Challenge Question How might UNHCR predict the number of people arriving into the different regions of Somalia?
The variables selected in Jetson, represent some of the most important influencing factors for forced displacement in the operational context of Somalia. The variables were selected according to different assumptions we needed to later validate, even from qualitative data or quantitative ground truth data. For selecting variables and validating them, we used several innovation methodologies,
SHAPE GenAI Assistant – A UNHCR Generative AI Platform for Strategic Planning, Analysis and Policy Support
Global SwitzerlandSHAPE GenAI Assistant is UNHCR’s secure internal Generative AI platform designed to support strategic planning, programme analysis, policy implementation and evidence-based decision-making. It enables colleagues to search curated UNHCR guidance and country-specific documentation, generate initial drafts, synthesise information, run predefined workflows and use specialised assistants tailored to functional needs. SHAPE helps reduce time spent on routine analytical and drafting tasks, while keeping human judgement, review and validation at the centre of the process.
Activity Type AI Tools/SolutionsTrainings/WorkshopsTechnical Assistance