What We Do

Disseminate and implement the international recommendations of the Expert Group on Refugee and Internally Displaced Persons Statistics (EGRIS) through strengthening capacity of national statistical systems and enhancement of the associated Compilers’ Manual.

Support the development of international recommendations on statistics on statelessness, and improve statelessness estimates at national, regional, and global levels.

Work with countries and custodian agencies to ensure that affected populations are included in the data production and reporting on priority Sustainable Development Goal indicators, when possible and relevant. 

Support UNHCR’s data transformation processes, in particular: (a) standardizing and integrating surveys; (b) enabling UNHCR’s country operations to generate comparable socioeconomic data and analysis on forcibly displaced persons for programming and policy in collaboration with national authorities; and (c) enhancing the collection and analysis of registration data and better aligning it with international statistical standards.

Support household surveys to include refugees and other populations affected by forced displacement in the national household survey. 

Set up a Crisis Observatory which will use traditional and adaptive tools for data collection and monitoring; build local capacities and partnerships; and conduct surveys of forcibly displaced households and hosts on development and welfare information, including household socioeconomic characteristics. 

Conduct household surveys and data collection on refugees, simultaneously with the official Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) undertaken by Central Statistics Agency. 

Conduct a socioeconomic assessment  of refugees and host communities, with a household survey covering a national sample and a targeted sample of camp-based refugees, host communities, and refugees in urban areas. 

Build upon the Crisis Recovery Survey (CRS) and conduct baseline surveys on household consumption, livelihoods, wellbeing, coping strategies, resilience, and return intentions of IDPs. Subsequent rounds will be conducted to measure perceptions, needs and constraints of those in and out of camps. 

Support data and evidence on the socioeconomic status of refugees and host communities by establishing a system for regular data collection in collaboration with the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. 

Work with an experienced call center and set up a digital platform to continuously collect data from key informants to produce analytics for humanitarian and development response. 

Based on Chad and Niger National Poverty Survey, conduct analytical work and provide evidence to help governments and international community to design better policies and programs for supporting refugees and host communities.

Improve approximations of poverty among displaced people by getting better estimates of whether they are indirectly captured in household surveys, and whether their welfare levels differ by their living situations (camps or in housing), their status (IDPs, refugees or asylum-seekers), and their country of origin. 

Explore innovative methods to strengthen collection and analysis of data on forced displacement, including an innovation award. The scope of the award is to be developed but could include predictive analytics and use of big data. The award will be widely distributed amongst private and academic sectors. 

Support the establishment and further enhancement of UNHCR’s external Microdata Library system. This will include collection and curation of datasets from UNHCR operations worldwide to populate the microdata library. These datasets on forcibly displaced populations will be responsibly anonymized and de-identified for public access and usage.

Support a multi-year consultative process to enable open data practices among a multitude of stakeholders who collect, manage, and protect data on forced displacement. The first stage will focus on UNHCR Registration and Survey data, and will build on existing efforts within UNHCR to improve data access.

Complete mapping exercises of a) socioeconomic microdata on forced displacement, and b) evidence on what works to improve the welfare of forcibly displaced populations and their hosts;  produce topical reports on specific areas of policy relevance for forcibly displaced; and generate responsive research on specific questions of operational effectiveness.

Train young scholars and professionals from displaced or host communities in middle- and low-income countries through the JDC Fellowship Program.The JDC will also invite experienced researchers to visit the Center to develop their research on forced displacement.