By UNHCR Records and Archives Section
To borrow a Gen-Z phrase, International Archives Week ‘hit different’ in 2025. It was far from a celebration this year.
As has been widely reported, the humanitarian sector has been facing a calamitous financial shortfall – severely impacting UNHCR’s ability to respond to the needs of 122 million people displaced by conflict and persecution. The impact of this on the lives of refugees and displaced persons cannot be understated – with Chad alone hosting more than 1.2 million Sudanese refugees fleeing unthinkable violence, even though it has one of the worlds’ least developed economies. Despite the extraordinary level of human suffering, the funding needs of this emergency, as of 3 June, are only 14% met. Every dollar is crucial.
As a result of this financial crunch, UNHCR has launched a comprehensive review of its activities to reduce expenditures while safeguarding our ability to protect refugees. Unsurprisingly, this will impact all our activities worldwide, including our work in the UNHCR Records and Archives team. For more information, please consult our press release.
What are the priorities for the UNHCR records and archives team?
As a function charged with meeting UNHCR’s information and recordkeeping needs, the immediate challenge is to deal with the consequences of this global review.
Some offices will send shipments of files for HQ; some colleagues separating from service will transfer records – physical and digital – to our repositories, so that the knowledge and evidence of decisions taken is available to their successors within the agency. Some websites will be taken down or merged as UNHCR’s functions change; certain information and data systems will be decommissioned. This data needs a custodian if it is to be kept accessible for reference, audit, and future analysis; extracting it from digital platforms requires the development, testing, and implementation of innovative solutions. Like a family moving house, sorting out what needs to be kept from the rest is no small task, and catching crucial knowledge for preservation before it’s lost is a time-critical exercise.
Furthermore, a major global downsizing comes with its own internal research demands. We’ve been asked: how has UNHCR closed operations in the past? What cost saving measures were put in place at the time? Can financial savings be identified based on precedent, or operational efficiencies and synergies found based on experience and lessons learned?
From an advocacy perspective, UNHCR’s history of delivering solutions and the impact of donor solidarity in the past are being revisited by fundraisers, with UN member states, partner organizations and the private sector the target audience. No stone is left unturned in the quest to bridge the gulf that exists between current humanitarian needs and funding for life-saving aid.
Our mission, as ever, is to capture the knowledge and make it available to UNHCR when and where it’s needed, whether it be for policy makers, protection activities or fundraisers working on behalf of UNHCR’s mandate. This is and will remain the priority of the UNHCR records and archives team. Covering these bases with a reduced global workforce, to avoid gaps, chaos and information loss within the archival record and disruption to the knowledge ecosystem, will nevertheless be no easy task.
What does this mean for the research community?
The positives: UNHCR remains committed to transparency and allowing its knowledge and recorded experience to be used to inform research, innovation and evidence-informed policy making, necessary elements in the achievement of UNHCR’s humanitarian mandate.
The archives will not be closed to the research public. The policy allowing UNHCR’s archives to be accessed, under controlled criteria, will remain in place – having served UNHCR and the research community well for 25 years.
In addition, the UNHCR records and archives team will be joining forces with the UNHCR Global Data service from October 2025, by which records, archives and data will be brought under the same umbrella – unifying UNHCR’s expertise within a collaborative engine-room of information and knowledge management.
The negatives: Inevitably, our capacity to welcome researchers to the archives reading room, to consult many hundreds of files at a time, will shrink in line with deep budget and staffing reductions.
In practice, this will mean significant limitations in the availability of research appointments, and longer waiting times for digital delivery, whilst we seek to establish and implement a new funding/business model to deliver our services. Please bear with us and be prepared to plan well ahead if consulting our archives is on your research agenda.
#ArchivesareAccessible – An appeal for partnerships:
“Archives are accessible” was thetheme adopted for International Archives Week 2025 by the International Council on Archives. In this spirit, and at this critical juncture, UNHCR records and archives are seeking capacity-building partnerships, particularly within the research, memory, and cultural industries, but also within the financial, innovation, and technology sectors.Our award-winning team of international archives experts have a strong track record of delivering innovative research outcomes.
Partnerships could take one of many forms:
- Secondment of archives staff to UNHCR for career development;
- Sponsored internships of students or recent graduates within the records and archives section;
- Pooling of resources, tools and capacity;
- Joint fundraising initiatives and consortium building;
- Project-based research and accessibility collaborations;
- Financial sponsorship of services and/or projects.
We are going through a challenging period, but our commitment to our mission remains unwavering. We welcome ideas and are eager to collaborate with those interested. If you would like to discuss a potential partnership with UNHCR archives, please reach out to us at [email protected] .
An immediate appeal:
Help a refugee. Save a life. The needs have never been greater. https://donate.unhcr.org/archives
#IAW2025 #ArchivesAreAccessible #withrefugees
A postal stamp issued by the West German postal service, one of 72 authorities that entered a fundraising partnership with UNHCR during World Refugee Year (1959-1960). (UNHCR Archives)