Waiting for academia: The impact of research on UNHCR policy, programmes and practice

Academic linkages

In 1991, I was flying to Tehran to evaluate UNHCR’s response to the Kurdish refugee crisis. Sitting next to me was Dr Sadako Ogata, the university professor who had recently been appointed as UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

In an attempt to break the ice, I asked, “High Commissioner, now you have left academia and joined UNHCR, do you have any thoughts about how to foster a closer relationship between them?” She gave me a withering look and said, “Mr. Crisp, I am currently dealing with one of the largest refugee movements of recent years. Academia will have to wait.”

While Mrs. Ogata’s response was somewhat dismissive at that time, UNHCR has always had close connections with the academic world. Many UNHCR staff members have had PhDs and scholarly publications to their name, especially in the field of refugee law. Paul Weiss, Gilbert Jaeger, Guy Goodwin-Gill and Alex Aleinikoff  come to mind.

Initiated by Mrs. Ogata, UNHCR has published a series of Oxford University Press books under the generic title The State of the World’s Refugees (subsequently People Forced to Flee) which aspired to reach academic standards and which were supported by an Academic Advisory Board involving some of the leading figures in refugee studies.

During my time with the agency, UNHCR was responsible for the production of the journals Refugee Research and Documentation and Refugee Survey Quarterly. The organisation also published 275 editions of a working paper series titled New Issues in Refugee Research, made its previously confidential evaluation reports available to researchers and opened its archives to the academic world. At a national level, UNHCR offices have supported the establishment of chairs at local universities and signed cooperation agreements with refugee studies centres.  

Constraints on impact 

In these diverse ways, UNHCR and the academic world have interacted with each other, sharing information and insights, and embarking upon joint initiatives. But to what extent does refugee research undertaken independently of UNHCR have a substantive impact on the organisation’s work? Perhaps not nearly as much as many academics think it has or would like it to have.

Academic research helps to shape the intellectual environment in which UNHCR policy is formulated. It plays a modest role in setting the organisation’s agenda and defining its priorities. In that respect, three examples can be cited: Barry Stein and Fred Cuny’s research on repatriation under conflict in the 1990s; the work of Cindy Horst, Laura Hammond and Katy Long on refugee mobility in the 2000s; and, most recently, the activities of the Local Engagement Refugee Research Network (LERRN), which has highlighted the importance of Refugee-Led Organisations (RLOs).

Even so, research has only a limited and usually indirect impact on UNHCR operations.

As far as academics are concerned, one has to ask whether they are as concerned with ‘policy relevant research’ as they often claim to be. Their primary preoccupation seems to be in raising research funding, publishing their findings, attending conferences and advancing their careers. Research that purports to be policy relevant is often used as a means to attain those legitimate professional ends.

Academics tend to approach UNHCR at too late a stage in the research process. They write up their research in obscure academic language, and make too little effort to disseminate their work and solicit feedback from the UNHCR personnel they have contacted. In the worst-case scenario, when approaching UNHCR, researchers are prone to make unreasonable requests for information, documents, contacts and logistical support. 

There are several reasons why UNHCR is not as receptive to academic research as it might be. The organisation’s managers rarely have the time, and often lack the inclination, to read academic texts, especially when they are confronted with fast-moving emergencies. 

They can be sceptical about the value of research, especially when it is based on short visits to the field and when it deals with issues that are not of urgent concern to the organisation. The impact of research can also be limited when it is overtly critical of UNHCR.

Because of their practical involvement with refugee issues, UNHCR staff members can develop a superiority complex in relation to researchers. A common remark made about the organisation’s Academic Advisory Group, for example, was that its scholarly members learned more from its meetings than the UNHCR personnel who attended them.

In terms of policy formulation and programme design, research is just one of many variables that influence UNHCR. Of greater significance are factors such as funding, host and donor state demands, internal and inter-agency competition and the pressures exerted by advocacy groups.

Even when research succeeds in influencing UNHCR’s perspectives, there is no guarantee that policy will be translated into practice. Staff members tend to be particularly sceptical of global policies, claiming that they are difficult to implement in the specific circumstances of the country where they are working.

As an institutional priority, UNHCR’s engagement with academia declined significantly after the departure of High Commissioner Antonio Guterres in 2015. The agency’s Policy Development and Evaluation Service, which acted as a focal point for researchers, was stripped of that function. UNHCR’s widely cited working paper series was terminated. And the organisation made little effort to work with the research institutes with which it had established cooperation agreements.

The localisation of research

Over the past five years, an attempt has been made to address this situation, through the establishment of the Global Academic Interdisciplinary Network (GAIN) which involves “universities, academic alliances and research institutions, together with UNHCR and other relevant stakeholders, to facilitate research, training and scholarship opportunities.”

As I pointed out in a 2018 article, several questions can be asked about this initiative. Wasn’t the world of refugee studies already highly networked? Was it appropriate for UNHCR to establish another one, especially as it was intended to support the implementation of the Global Compact on Refugees, which some academics considered to be a flawed initiative?

Why was the GAIN secretariat initially located in the UK, a choice that reinforced the network’s anglophone and Global North character? To what extent has and will GAIN be able to surmount the many obstacles to cooperation between UNHCR and academia? And will UNHCR’s commitment to GAIN be sustained now that it has a serious funding crisis?

Looking to the future, the refugee research landscape seems likely to change. International aid cuts will reduce the funding available to the Global North institutes and individuals that have traditionally dominated the field. At the same time, the establishment of both LERRN and the Refugee-Led Research Hub suggest that forced migration research might in future become increasingly localised and refugee-led.

As LERRN Director James Milner has pointed out, 80 per cent of the world’s refugees live in developing countries, but 80 per cent of the knowledge production on refugees has hitherto originated in the Global North. If those proportions begin to shift, will refugee research take new directions? 

Refugee studies has been criticised for its excessive focus on UNHCR and its uncritical use of UNHCR’s categories, concepts and frames of reference. The question now is whether the growing volume of research undertaken by locally-based scholars, RLOs and individual refugees can break out of this straitjacket and influence the work of UNHCR in new and more powerful ways.

Dr. Jeff Crisp worked for UNHCR between 1987 and 2013, and is a Visiting Fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre.