Raw Material: UNHCR’s Individual Case Files as a Historical Source, 1951–75

Abstract

This article contributes to the emerging field of refugee history by inviting a consideration of the extensive holdings of the Records and Archives Division of the Geneva-based Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It focuses on a sample of confidential case files created in the quarter-century following the launch of UNHCR to determine whether an individual was eligible for recognition and thus for protection and assistance under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. The postwar international refugee regime was selective and biased towards refugees of European origin, but UNHCR increasingly engaged with non-European refugees, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. A close study of the case files concerning refugees in different sites of displacement raises questions about the power vested in the new institution and the circumstances in which refugees sought access to UNHCR. Against the backdrop of Cold War and decolonization the article also engages with issues around the archive, ‘access’ and ‘disclosure’: not only the terms of the encounter between refugees and officialdom, but the privileged access of scholars to confidential records and by extension to material that discloses intimate aspects of refugee lives.