UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agency: Supporting refugees and humanitarian service delivery using biometrics

By the end of 2020, 82.4 million individuals were forcibly displaced. This equates to more than one in every hundred people across the world, the largest number in modern history. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is a global organization dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people who have fled violence, persecution, war or disaster at home.

UNHCR has worked for more than 70 years to help people forced to flee across enormously varied environments. UNHCR’s operations are highly dependent on the collection and use of personal data for humanitarian delivery. Understanding who a person is, is critical to being able to deliver life-saving support. The identities which UNHCR protects have been lifelines for people in need. 

The first use of biometrics in UNHCR was in 2002. While initially collected without links to other biographic data in Pakistan from Afghan refugees returning home to facilitate the fair issuance of cash grants once to each family, UNHCR has since evolved its use of biometrics. Biometrics data is now considered an integral component of registration data and is processed in 79 country operations. Since the introduction of their use, biometrics have brought direct benefits to refugees, UNHCR and partners alike.

Refugee financial inclusion and self-reliance are key aims of the 2018 Global Compact on Refugees.  As well as reliably establishing and preserving identities, improving operational efficiency and protecting refugees against fraud, the increased use of biometric data to support UNHCR’s registration and identity management work has opened up new approaches and possibilities to support the Global Compact objectives.

Displaced people often face formidable regulatory barriers in accessing services, such as registering a SIM card in their own name or opening a bank account. These obstacles can inhibit not just the efficient delivery of humanitarian assistance but also a refugee’s ability to keep in contact with family or to ably participate in a host state’s economy. Many refugees do not hold identity documents from their country of origin or the refugee identity credentials they do possess are not fully recognized by the host-state authorities.

In Uganda UNHCR and the United Nations Capital Development Fund worked together with the telecommunications regulator and the Office of the Prime Minister as well as with mobile network operators, internet service providers and humanitarian agencies in an effort to extend connectivity to refugees and their hosting communities. As a result, a directive was issued from the Uganda Communications Commission UCC to all mobile network operators to open SIM Card registration to those with refugee identity cards or attestation letters.

A key enabler to the directive was access to the biometrics secured by UNHCR. The SIM registration process for Ugandan nationals using automated biometric and biographic KYC checks was extended to cover the refugee population checking against biometric data collected jointly by UNHCR and the Government of Uganda. With biometrics offering comparable levels of identity assurance and process integrity for refugees as was in place for Ugandan nationals, over 600,000 refugees were provided with a legal pathway to accessing cellular connections for the first time.

The strengthening of registration data with biometrics has also helped other states to support the Global Compact objectives and promote the financial inclusion of refugees. Following the introduction of biometrics to registration processes, jointly issued UNHCR-Government identity attestations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Malawi were recognized as providing sufficient assurance to meet KYC requirements for the first time for the opening of refugee bank accounts, and for SIM card issuance in Niger. States in these situations have allowed markets to grow and families to communicate with ease where separation in times of conflict had previously resulted in isolation.

In Somalia, when former refugees return from Kenya with UNHCR identity attestations, their identities can be verified by UNHCR and the Government of Somalia using UNHCR’s biometrics system. Based on this verification alone, UNHCR and the Government can issue an official Proof of Return document which is sufficient even in the absence of any other official identity documents for the refugee returnees to immediately open bank accounts.

In today’s world, where we witness more and more cuts to the food rations of refugees, making sure that the assistance provided to every refugee is maximized and does not fall into the wrong hands is not only important, but life-saving.

In Iraq, UNHCR reduced the onboarding time for new individuals opening an account with a financial service provider from over two months to under three seconds by forming a partnership between the financial institution and an iris-biometrics payment solutions company. The partnership strengthened protection against fraud and identity misrepresentation through iris authentication. More than 120,000 vulnerable families and approximately 30,000 refugees in Iraq received cash support via UNHCR, with the agency disbursing over $60 million USD through its partners in 2018 alone. Refugees have the option to cash-out using iris without any needing any other identification in addition to existing mechanisms. Since the launch of the project in 2019, over 90,000 transactions were performed in this way.

UNHCR has also introduced self-service processes in Jordan and other countries, empowering refugees to have more access and control over their data stored with UNHCR, enabling them to validate and update data previously collected during registration. Self-renewal has also proven time saving for refugees, cutting down sometimes long waiting times in registration centres and increasing accessibility.

In the longer term, UNHCR aims to enable refugees, with their consent, to update data remotely and have access to a unique, portable, trusted digital identity to promote inclusion in civil society and state systems. Enabling refugees to authenticate against the biometric data collected from them has ensured that UNHCR can deliver on its humanitarian mandate and interact with refugee families with a high degree of confidence. No one would deny that the collection and storage of biometric data by UNHCR comes with a huge responsibility to continuously assess how it is secured, used and ultimately destroyed. Alongside diligently managing the risks, UNHCR will continue to focus on how the responsible and ethical use of biometrics can improve the way it serves and benefits the lives of the people it seeks to protect.

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UNHCR holds ‘International Observer’ status with the Biometrics Institute and has contributed to a number of Institute events and products over its history, including the recent Good Practice Framework.

UNHCR – The UN Refugee Agency
Sam Jefferies

Joined as International Observer in 2019

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