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Dataset of Displacement Locations (UNHCR)

This repository contains the data of displacement (IDP, refugee, returnee, asylum seeker) locations as featured in:

Zhou, Yang-Yang and Andrew Shaver. (2021). Reexamining the Effect of Refugees on Civil Conflict: A Global Subnational Analysis. American Political Science Review, 1-22. <a href="doi:10.1017/S0003055421000502" class="uri">doi:10.1017/S0003055421000502</a>

If using this dataset, please cite this paper and acknowledge the UNHCR Operational Data Systems and Support section (ODSS).

Overview

displacement_locations_unhcr.csv is a global dataset from the UNHCR Operational Data Systems and Support section (ODSS), previously the Field Information and Coordination Support Section (FICSS). This dataset encompasses the universe of refugee, returnee, IDP, and asylum seeker locations that the UNHCR is aware of (even if they are not actively working in these locations), and it includes historic and currently open sites. The earliest recorded locations are from 1966, and the data was last updated by ODSS on January 6, 2020.

To construct these data, UNHCR country teams and field staff report the location of any known displaced communities to ODSS.

With the help of a team of research assistants, we manually validated and corrected refugee and IDP locations that were open during our study period from 1990–2018. Outside of this time span, we have not made corrections.

Thus, we share this dataset on Github not only to provide researchers with global data on historic and current displacement locations, but also to make this a “living dataset,” where experts can send us corrections and where the most updated version is always publicly available.

Descriptives

displacement_locations_unhcr.csv has 13733 observations.

The table and map below show the displacement locations by migration type and whether they are open or closed as of late 2019/early 2020.

TypeNClosedOpen
Asylum Seeker972770
IDP584017984042
Other1651650
Refugee734136323709
Returnee26122338

Number of locations by type

Codebook

Submit a correction to the data

If you would like to submit a correction to the data, go to Issues > New Issue > Data Entry and submit a report to help us improve the dataset. Please make sure to send us a source (e.g. a report from the UNHCR, IOM, etc.) so that we can validate the correction and for transparency.

Coming Soon

We will continue to publicly release related data when they are ready. Here’s what we’re working on now:

Refugee Location-Year Population data: for each refugee location (eg. refugee camp, settlement), this dataset will also include total population by year along with population disaggregated by gender and origin country.

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to experts from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR): Jason Hepps, Ewen Macleod, Léo Martine, Raouf Mazou, Brett Moore, Petra Nahmias, Htun Zaw Oo, Yvon Orand, Kimberly Roberson, Edgar Scrase, Karl Steinacker, Tayyar Sukru Cansizoglu, Vicky Tennant, Alex Tyler, and staff members of the Field Information and Coordination Support Section (FICSS) / Operational Data Systems and Support section (ODSS) for providing data and guidance.

We owe a special debt of gratitude to Joshua Angelo and Lesley Chavez for their assistance with expanding and validating the UNHCR dataset. We also thank the following research assistants from the Political Violence Lab: Zachary Durkee, Nia Gooding, Amy Hu, Caterina Hyneman, Jack Jacobs, Karina Martinez, Michael Nachman, Nicholas Nobles, Amanda Ostrom, Meghna Ray, Alexander Rounaghi, Jared Solomon, Zach Stevens, and Nicholas Woo for excellent research assistance.