Jordan

Egypt

Syrian Arab Republic

I was working as the regional registration and identity management officer for the Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA) when I was tasked to work out the profile of persons from Syria registered with the organization in 2018 together with a project team. The necessary conditions had not been in place in Syria for a safe and dignified return of refugees. The overall approach of UNHCR regarding forcibly displaced persons from Syria was therefore guided by a comprehensive protection and solutions strategy. Some landmark global developments had affected UNHCR’s operations in general and the financial situation in 2018. UNHCR had convened a high-level meeting in Geneva on 30 March 2016 on 'legal pathways' for Syrian refugees and was playing a key role in planning a High-Level Plenary of the General Assembly on large movements of refugees and migrants in September. Both of these events expanded global mechanisms for responsibility sharing. A few months after that, UNHCR engaged in global discussions at the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 rallying international support for the organization’s work and developing new approaches for taking it forward. Syria emergency being a global strategic priority, there was an immense pressure on UNHCR and the staff working in data like myself to take advantage of new opportunities to strengthen collective outcomes in humanitarian operations through innovation and new financing models and defend the foundations of international protection. UNHCR had to show, particularly to development actors, international financial institutions, and the private sector, that it was prepared for rapid and effective emergency response from Syria or for potential returns to the country. We needed to identify obstacles, conditions, and actions necessary for asylum seekers and refugees’ return to Syria with “data” and address them in budgetary planning. The effort to bring the data together on Syrian refugees as a single authoritative source, linking different datasets from different databases across the region, was a highly complex and impossible task to achieve. The records in UNHCR’s registration and population database proGres (the most widely used corporate data collection tool out of the 35 databases that were yet to become interoperable) were either incomplete, missing, or unreliable. The series of different versions of proGres population database, which was at last upgraded to V4 in 2021 with 300 million dollars for design and roll-out, did not have the technical functions to diagnose the limitations, take corrective measure on the data, quantify, and monitor the reliability of data generated over time. We could not quantify the size of the problem and undertake a comparison of the demographical factors e.g.; age, gender, dependency, specific needs, family size, place of origin, time of arrival, time of registration between refugee and returnee population and assess the correlations or causation between refugees who did not return to Syria and returnee groups. We could not generate the simple baseline figures on how many new-born babies, separated families, unaccompanied minors, or persons with serious medical conditions from Syria had registered with the organization in the MENA region, or how many persons had been resettled to a third country or returned to Syria. While trying to diagnose the limitations of data for the Syrian refugees, for example, we identified 14,546 adults registered as children at risk, 2,634 children as being in detention since 2013 onwards, thousands of persons with inactive refugee identity cards in the MENA region, and 1,700 cases waiting for UNHCR to issue the decision on refugee status determination since 2005 in one country only. But we coordinated the undertaking of the survey with Syrian refugees across the UNHCR offices in the MENA region with Kobo Toolbox and successfully published the results of the 5th Regional Survey on Refugee Return Perceptions and Intentions in March 2019.

Preparing for Returns to Syria without Data

Global

Q. Are there any corporate tools that produce data to monitor the compliance of policy and standards with the actions the organization under a specific protection mandate responsibility producing data or activity?This is a big question. There are a set of tools. COMPASS is the programme tool launched in 2021. ProGres is the main example I can give as population registry. Then you have other regional tools. Q. I believe the data in COMPASS is updated by the staff, and not directly connected to proGres or other databases. How does COMPASS help to measure the gap between policy intent and actual impact of services on the populations?That is right, there are things being cooked, but not complete yet. It should be one of the ultimate objectives of Orion. To be honest, it might not really say where the gap is, it would connect the tools and databases. Ultimately, it will fulfil the official version of things, and not everything. It would require a sort of a collective vision on what is done at country or level at the moment, scripting queries to get the data out of multiple databases to identify people waiting with inactive refugee identity documentation, waiting for refugee status determination interviews etc. Openly sharing with the donors, or externals would be helpful, but we cannot. At least internally we can change things to acknowledge we have problems and what they are, then consider if and how it can be fixed. Sometimes doing the right thing will hurt more than doing the wrong thing. It often happens for example when there is a number of individuals who should be inactivated in the system, but while your budget is not enough to support the real population, so how do you explain that to the donors? It may trigger the dramatic consequences on the persons of concern. So, sometimes it is with the good intention, not to go public I mean. Pros and cons would tell you what the benefit for the public to know would be. But of course, UNHCR never goes public when something goes wrong. Fixing something may also cost more than keeping it e.g. proGres V4. It would cost more to fix it, so we go with it, but at least we can document for everyone to know what we are dealing with and avoid duplicating the same problem in the future while leaving things as they are. Q. Where do the priorities of the donors and the people UNHCR serves sit in that dynamic?Prioritizing donors create some harm sometimes. Take earmarked funding as an example. So, the donors would say I want that money to be used only for population with X nationality, specifically. Your country has populations from Y nationality an Z and everything else in the alphabet, then you find a way to hide the problem. It does not make sense to build a school for that one specific population. It is not with ill-intentions but to serve the best interests of under-funded population groups. When we budget, it is an issue of impact. So when you plan with your budget to send to HQs, which may not be accurate in its decisions around the benefits of the activities, then you end up building or thinking of a project not to lose the money, as unspent budget would mean you have less money the next year. The structure of UNHCR is not helping with the problem either. In a way, you end up building a special bond with the people you serve for, in that specific country or region, thinking it is my people, they are my responsibility, and I need to do more, and help them more. So for frontline responders some time the challenge is about balancing the fund with the needs and for some of them If this comes with underreporting and playing with numbers, they will end up doing it.&nbsp; This has an impact on the people. For HQs, it may be pure numbers, but for the one overseeing that population, it is real people. You don’t think about them as 30 cases, you think of them as 30 people as a caseworker. I don’t know if it makes sense.&nbsp;Q. Very interesting what you say. Going back to donors’ interest in more and better data, especially since the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, what is your take on siloed metrics to monitor impact, if you could reflect on some real life situations that you witnessed, how would you exemplify erasures, simplifications, errors in data?&nbsp;The key issue word here is siloed. People design programs in isolation, so data remained isolated, and monitoring of the service remain isolated. In most cases to my knowledge at least. We do not look at our tools and programs to work together for the populations we serve. So, if I am monitoring Caritas that provides health services, they monitor the impact vis-a-vis that partner only. One operation has more than 10 partners providing the same services. UNHCR receiving report on how many people received child protection intervention, sex and gender-based violence support, psychosocial intervention etc. How do you monitor the impact of the integrated services? An SGBV survivor may need health care and psychosocial support. We look at the chunk of interventions from an isolated perspective and procedure. SGBV would use the inter-agency tool for SGBV, child protection would be using CPIMS, mental health will use whatever, but these tools don’t talk to each other so how can we measure the impact from the point of view of the persons of concerns? Advocacy on SGBV for example. Is there any way to measure the impact of the SGBV sessions on the number of reported cases? Having a wholistic protection strategy could be a good idea, but it is difficult to implement. It is not easy to do. It is a data gap for sure, it is the data gap in the humanitarian sector, it goes beyond PRIMES.

From Population Data to Compass

The data that UNHCR collect on specific needs in its population database (proGres Version 4) are generally based on the observations of registration or protection staff who are using the UNHCR Registration Handbook, 2003, specific Needs Codes &amp; definitions to identify and classify these elements. These data are recorded under specific data fields, but there are no central monitoring tools to verify the reliability of the data collected. Most of these data are recorded under “free text” in case management notes which are not available to other V4 modules (refugee status determination, resettlement etc.) nor otherwise connected within PRIMES. UNHCR and its partner agencies collect and record the same information on specific needs from the registered persons without any systematic way to organize, analyse, or monitor the reliability of these data. Analysis of these data is done on a case-by-case basis. Furthermore, UNHCR global data systems do not have minimum Age, Gender, Diversity (AGD) typologies to allow for country, regional, global, and temporal aggregation, and data comparability. The over 30 million asylum seekers and refugees across the globe that UNHCR reported under its care possess diverse experiences and needs, that no single tool, dashboard, technology, or institution can fully capture. A centralised, integrated system could amalgamate insights from various tools and databases through a set of shared indicators, thereby enhancing UNHCR's ability to effectively monitor these diverse needs. Its absence has profound implications on the overall efficacy of monitoring and evaluating UNHCR's operations on multiple levels. Take the example of average processing time for first instance refugee status determination decisions, which needs to meet a three-month standard after the interview based on the procedural standards. Various data points in UNHCR's various databases would need to contribute to its aggregation to calculate the resultant aggregate figures that this indicator will generate. We need to compute the ratio of the total processing days for all cases that received a first instance decision by a country of asylum during the reporting period, to the total count of cases for which a first-instance final decision was taken upon decision review: •	Numerator: Count of processing days for all cases that received a first instance decision by a country of asylum during the reporting period•	Denominator: Total count of cases for which a first-instance final decision was taken upon decision review •	Unit: Days •	Type: Integer Multiple proGres log entries, like the date of decision issuance or record updates, need to be used to aggregate this average time metric to assess UNHCR's compliance with its own three-month standard for issuing decisions after interviews. This example is merely one indicator in a specific area of UNHCR's operational work listed in multiple procedural guidelines. These indicators are distinct, but ideally, they should be identified to enable relational connection and interpretation between the different data sets relating to different areas of UNHCR's operational work. At the operational level, lack of consistent data collection methods across different countries and lack of interoperability between systems affects the quality of assistance provided to refugees and displaced persons. This disconnection prevents detailed analysis using attributes such as nationality, sex, marital status, school grade, age, and specific needs like 'elderly' or 'child at risk.' The impact of this data deficiency extends beyond inaccurate record-keeping; it undermines service provision itself. For example, without reliable data, it becomes challenging to monitor whether people recorded with medical needs are actually prioritised for RSD interviews and subsequently referred to the appropriate healthcare partners. The absence of a clear, real-time understanding of the conditions and needs of the populations it serves can lead to aggravating their vulnerability. At the strategic planning level, integrating these systems would not only streamline data interpretation but also enable complex analyses, like designing targeted aid programs based on year of arrival or evaluating local integration potential across different refugee groups in various host countries.

On Specific Needs

Moving to the systems element, how do you see UNHCR’s current landscape with organizing and analysing its data? In other words, what is lost in the returnees’ data from ProGres to Annual Statistical Report and the data used in the Country Operation planning? It needs human touch to calculate how much we need to spend for that specific even or per person. ProGres v3 was not centralized before, V4 is not solving this issue because the legacy e.g., certain discrepancies with data quality issue from V3 is still there. There is still not …data quality standards. Lots of fields that were not mandatory, they are open texts. In the same operation staff maybe updating the same action that happens in real life in a different way in the database. So how do you monitor the updates without standards when open texts and updates are done differently. This brings inconsistencies. And when you extract the data, it is always open to interpretation. This is when the human elements come in with mistakes in interpretation. When I was in the regional office, compiling the Annual Statistical Report from all countries, each had a different standard operating procedure, applying different standards to the same caseload. The problem comes when you try to compile all the submissions. How many people are active in the database? If you do that, you miss some people in some countries. So, that requires first and foremost harmonization of procedures within the countries and then within the region, at least to be able to interpret the data in the same way interpreting the people who are active in the system and actively receiving aid from UNHCR not to leave anybody behind, with different combinations of data points to interpret the outcome, which always loose some people. This is the data quality issue we have on our data. Dataport is helping a lot to see some inconsistencies, but it will always need humans to go and see the people and correct the mistake.&nbsp;&nbsp; If the person is missing the food distribution 3 times, because in some operations the person is inactivated after 3 absences, we need to remove the person from the list. It is like indirectly discouraging people not to go outside the camp to find a job. I am outside the camp for 7 months, but I should be able to get my ration when I get back, because I just need a job, we are asked to deactivate these people. Some are reactivated after protection screening or interview. We cannot track the movement of people. UNHCR tools cannot track people. Biometric data, fingerprinting or iris verification technology is not everywhere. Unless the person shows up to the office to report that, UNHCR cannot track people.&nbsp; How about the role of UNHCR’s systems and databases, I think Orion identified 35 of them only at the global level, within that data gap? Yeah, that is right…you are right, we have a lot of data and they do not talk to each other, that is absolutely true. We have a lot of data but we are not analysing the data. We have RSD with their tools, RST with their tools, programme with their tools, lots of excel databases. It was hell to compile it together. Orion is aiming to interconnect all of them, maybe at the end we will see something. Regional Data, Information Management and Analysis units are working towards that, towards centralizing the data. What programme section maybe sharing is already shared by protection in different reports, collected by different tools. Too coordinate between different section to validate their data and refer to each other’s was a step towards centralizing the interpretation. We did it using PowerBi and python at one regional office I know. If HQs manages successfully, I don’t know when and how it will happen, to connect all UNHCR’s data in the coming years, to solve this problem, and make sure we do not collect the same data about the same people or miss them in our reporting…through a unique source of data, of course there will always be errors, but technically it would be mitigated through this unique source of data.&nbsp;&nbsp; Instead of programme carrying out household surveys, they would end up connecting it to population database, it would be important to update this in the same source and see if this data is duplicated. If all units and sections work like that, at the end, perhaps a little utopic, but it may make it possible at the backend. This is, in a nutshell, how I see this… I don't know if you have any follow up question on that… but basically, we look at multiple different departments collecting data, and they don’t integrate back or talk to each other, and we lose one story of one refugee in multiple places.&nbsp;

Bridging UNHCR's Data Gaps from Individual Narratives to Global Reports

The visual does not suggest anything about the organization’s existing budget for education, how many children within the schooling age group are registered with UNHCR, the reasons for school dropouts or how many of them are enrolled in schools as a result of public, government or private sector donations to the organization. Furthermore, it provides no information or the possible resource implications and effect of UNHCR’s budget on providing refugee children with access to school, the source of the baseline population and financial data that UNHCR uses to make such calculations. Each figure concerns similar factors regarding a particular assumption about the impact of the organization’s humanitarian assistance delivery: number of births in the country of asylum, persons in need of medical services, overall refugee and asylum seeker population, age group as factors of resource allocation for education, shelter, and medical assistance, etc.&nbsp; Questions: How does UNHCR decide which aspects of its work to highlight in public reports and presentations?To what extent does UNHCR include challenges related to systemic biases, infrastructure, and failed projects in its public narratives?How does UNHCR maintain transparency and honesty while managing the positive portrayal of its work?What measures does UNHCR take to ensure that its public image accurately reflects its operations, successes, and challenges?How does UNHCR plan to improve its communication about the challenges it faces, especially those pertaining to systemic biases, infrastructure, and failed projects?

Shadows of Data-Fiction

Why donor visibility matters: Stresses the need for recognizing and acknowledging donors, fostering trust, enhancing transparency, nurturing long-term relationships, and incentivizing future contributions.
The foundations of donor visibility: Discusses the foundational principles that form the backbone of effective donor visibility. It might include aspects such as respect, mutual understanding, transparency, and a focus on the impact of donations.
Who contributes to donor visibility?: Describes the roles and responsibilities of various parties involved in improving donor visibility. This could be the organization, its communications and marketing teams, and even the donors themselves.
Who do we give visibility to?: Provides guidance on which donors should be given visibility. It might also outline the criteria for visibility such as donation size or the impact of the donation.
Understanding our donors: Explains the importance of knowing the donors - their motivations, interests, and donation patterns, as a critical step in creating meaningful visibility strategies.
Planning: This part of the guidelines detail the process of planning donor visibility initiatives, the necessary steps, who should be involved, and when these initiatives should be implemented.
Keeping track: Emphasizes the importance of maintaining accurate and up-to-date records of donations and donors, ensuring that all donors are appropriately acknowledged and their contributions accurately reported.
Negotiating visibility clauses: Provides guidance on how to negotiate visibility clauses in donation agreements. This could include how to balance the donor's desires for recognition with the organization's needs and constraints.
Printed material: Outlines how to use printed materials, like newsletters, reports, or donor walls, to give visibility to donors.
Content and communications: Provides recommendations for creating and distributing content that highlights donors. This might include the use of various channels, like websites, emails, and social media.
Donor missions: Discusses the importance of organizing and hosting donor visits or missions, an effective tool to demonstrate impact and give visibility to significant donors. It may offer advice on how to plan and execute these visits effectively.


Donor Visibility Guidelines

How does UNHCR communicate its funding needs to the public?

The principle of accountability for UNHCR refers to the responsibility the organization holds to ensure that its actions and decisions align with its mandate, principles, and international legal frameworks. Accountability ensures that UNHCR maintains the trust of the people it serves, its donors, partners, host countries, and the broader international community. It is a foundational principle to ensure the integrity, effectiveness, and efficiency of the organization. In the context of the UNHCR, accountability means:

1.	Adherence to Mandate: UNHCR must remain true to its primary objective of ensuring the protection of refugees, internally displaced, and stateless persons.
2.	Transparency: UNHCR must operate in a transparent manner, providing clear insight into its activities, decision-making processes, and the use of resources.
3.	Answerability: UNHCR must be able to explain and provide reasons for its actions and decisions, particularly when it concerns the rights and well-being of persons of concern.
4.	Responsibility: If the UNHCR or its staff act against the mandate or make decisions that harm its beneficiaries, there should be mechanisms to rectify such actions and prevent them from recurring.
5.	Feedback and Redress: People of concern should have mechanisms to provide feedback and seek redress if their rights are violated or if they believe UNHCR is not living up to its commitments.
6.	Continuous Improvement: UNHCR should regularly evaluate and reflect on its actions, learning from both successes and failures to improve its operations and the impact on its beneficiaries.


The Principle of Accountability

The appeal for donations that UNHCR updates every three to six months or immediately following a significant crisis on its global website, classifying its data in relation to different legal definitions. Using a standardised template, changes are made to datasets and images to reflect the current emergency or the circumstances of forcibly displaced populations, typically presenting a focused, consistent perspective on how UNHCR does what it does to alleviate their suffering.


Welcome to REFUGEE DATA MINDER tutorial!

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