GENEVA (AN) — In the basement of the U.N. refugee agency, handwritten letters, field reports, policy memoranda and other one-of-a-kind records documenting the global history of displacement stretch for 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) of shelving.
But severe funding cuts and restructuring at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, are putting pressure on one of the world’s most important humanitarian archives, raising concerns that records documenting more than seven decades of displacement, refugee protection and institutional decision-making could be damaged, rendered inaccessible or become difficult to preserve and access.
