UNHCR Glossary

UNHCR's Status Determination and Protection Information Section, within the Division of International Protection, has produced a Master Glossary of Terms (June 2006). This is a revised compilation of the terms most commonly used in a variety of UNHCR protection-related publications. It also incorporates terms from OCHA's Glossary of Humanitarian Terms (2003).

Glossaries/dictionaries that cover the field of forced migration are few and far between. Most tend to be in-house publications like the two mentioned above rather than formally published reference materials. Some additional titles include:

- International Agreed Glossary of Basic Terms Related to Disaster Management (1992) [text]. This also served as the source for the Multi-language Glossary on Natural Disasters [site].

- International Migration Law: Glossary on Migration (2004) [text]. Although note that the refugee community's response to this glossary from IOM was quite critical. The Director of UNHCR's Protection Division expressed its "concer[n] that important refugee principles and asylum concepts have been subsumed as if they were simply subject headings within an established body of 'International Migration Law', with key principles and concepts having, as a result, been loosely, sometimes even inappropriately defined" (UNHCR Statement). See also ICVA's statement.

- International Thesaurus of Refugee Terminology (online version, 2003) [site]. Although not a glossary, the thesaurus has been in print since 1988 and provides standardized terminology for many of the information centers with specialized forced migration collections. Definitions in the form of "scope notes" are included for a number of terms.

Posted in Publications and Web Sites/Tools.