The Metrics of Asylum

In the field of international justice and humanitarian aid, no organization recognizes the importance of measuring results more than the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In November 2005, the UNHCR released a pilot report aimed at presenting refugee protection from a quantitative perspective. The document, entitled Measuring Protection by Numbers, is now available online as a comprehensive document.

One key objective of the pilot report is to monitor demographic trends on a global scale, in order to shed light on the importance of the work that the UNHCR does in offering protection to refugees and internally displaced persons (IDP's). According to the report, by the end of 2005, the total population of concern to the UNHCR had risen from 19.5 million individuals to 21 million (http://www.unhcr.org/statistics.html). The report also identifies Pakistan, Iran, Germany, Tanzania, and the U.S. as the largest refugee hosting countries in the world. Pakistan is the largest, hosting approximately 1.1 million refugees. The UNHCR also closely monitors the number of new asylum-seekers and processing of claims on an annual basis, by country. For example, it is reported that in 2003, there were 73,800 new asylum seekers in the U.S., and by 2005 that number declined to 48,900 (http://www.unhcr.org/statistics.html).

While the UNHCR is doing a good job of monitoring demographic trends and communicating their importance, there is still some progress to be made in the way of operational metrics related to funding and expenditures. The UNHCR has a very detailed budget, but what it has lacked to date is a way to link funding and budget expenditures to actual results in terms of aid to individuals. In an organization as vast as the UNHCR, the importance of clearly defined results is paramount in focusing and aligning the efforts of those involved in the organization. It is encouraging, therefore, that the UNHCR's leadership recognizes the need for results-based budgeting and other forms of strategic management. According to the UNHCR's website, the organization is "moving forward with its efforts to institutionalize results-based management, including results-based budgeting, as a fundamental performance, results, and accountability framework for the organization". One of the UNHCR's key objectives related to results-based management is to "capture baseline information on the core problems we are addressing in relation to standards and indicators". Perhaps most importantly, the UNHCR hopes that performance-based management "will facilitate the measuring and recording of progress against objectives and expenditures against budget, thus enabling better management information on what has been delivered and what impact it has had in improving the lives of persons of concern" (http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis /vtx/home?id=search). The organization plans to implement a software-based system that will facilitate the results-management process, and it is set to be rolled out in 2008.

Thus, to date the UNHCR has not done an excellent job of communicating operational key metrics to potential donors, governmental organizations, and the world's public. However, it is promising that the organization's leadership recognizes the need to improve in this area. It is currently working to implement a strategic management system that will link its funding and budgeting to actual results (An example of this would be a measure of the number of refugees processed at a given location per $1,000 budgeted dollars). The organization already has a fairly complex and well-established system for tracking results and data trends. This system can easily be adapted to fit a strategic management framework. Because the UNHCR has identified how critical its operations are to changing the lives of millions of individuals, it must further capitalize on the effective communication of results in order to align and focus the efforts of its employees and donors. Leadership theorists have shown that subordinates in an organization want to have a clear understanding of how their personal efforts are contributing to the long-term success of the organization. In this case, they want to know precisely how they are helping to change lives.