UNHCR Refugee Data Visualized, 2023

I’m interested in the variety of ways that cultures mobilize and communities sustain; a unique way to begin this study is to look at the ways in which they exist through and in the aftermath of political turmoil: the arts amidst cultural revolutions, migration and refugee crises, & language and education patterns. For this assignment, I wanted to focus on a single attribute centered on an issue that has dominated our political and media landscape in recent years: refugees.

Rates of conflict and political violence, human rights violations, and environmental disasters have nearly doubled within just the previous decade, causing a massive swell in the number of forcibly displaced people with 2023 seeing the highest number on record. Despite major media coverage on regions of conflict in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion and Palestine, these conflicts are not uniquely made to blame. Conflicts in Sudan, Afghanistan, Colombia, and Somalia have only strengthened through the decades; and as the following sources and visualizations illustrate, their role in the global refugee crisis cannot be understated.

Data

The data was sourced from the UNHCR’s Refugee Data Finder, inclusive of all but one of their optional population types (Host Community). The downloaded datasets were focused on specific parameters: Total refugee, IDP, and others of concern population figures for each country of origin, further delineated along age and sex for 2023.*

In totality, four visualizations were created using four datasets from the UNHCR.

*This project follows the UNHCR standard on their data finder: ‘refugee’ is a catch-all term for the following populations: Asylum-seekers, internally displaced people, stateless people, and others of concern to the UNHCR.

Distribution of Informal Settlements, 2023

First, I wanted to explore the distribution of informal settlements and the countries that harbored the most. Unlike asylum applications or a country’s recognition of a person as a refugee, informal settlements often house persons that were made to flee or forcibly displaced in short amounts of time, often with little resource from the host country to formally resettle or recognize them.

Unsurprisingly, the countries with the highest populations in informal settlements are the countries with the least infrastructure to support proper accommodations. A design choice that was used to integrate this in the map, is including the highlight hover feature over the legend. This choice was intentional, as it illustrates the severity of the refugee and IDP crisis in places such as Sudan and Somalia.

Regional Displacement Trends

To visualize the scope of Afghani refugees to the global rise in vulnerable populations, a stacked area chart was created, once again divided by age and sex. The global data was exclusively a 1:1 with the Afghani data of the same sections; the total global refugee population of this year was 116,478,712 (when summing both Female and Male global refugees data, the total becomes 81,054,019). The rise may be attributed to millions of refugees where age or sex was could not be accounted for.

Hover over the the legend items to isolate each variable

The distribution of refugees across the world is subject to continuous flux as global politics continues to intensify. As of 2023, the number of refugees (and internally displaced people) was estimated to be about 116,478,712.

Future Iterations

This project has incredible flexibility to grow, and the data from the UNHCR should be further explored. Research into the rates of change of refugee populations, and integration with projects related to migration would greatly supplement this project.