UN Data on Refugees
- What data set will you use for your final report? (describe your dataset, include a link to it and claim it at the URL above).
Link to Data set: http://data.un.org/Search.aspx?q=refugee
United Nations Refugee Data
- Describe the data set. What kind of data does it contain?
The United Nations data on Refugee provides the number of recorded refugees and “refugee-like” person who had sought refuge to another country. This collection of data contains the number of refugees and “refugee-like” people between the years of 1975 to 2013. It contains the total number of refugees, their country of origin and their country of refuge. This data does not show the number of unrecorded and undocumented asylum seekers. It only contains the number of refugees who has been helped and documented by the UN.
- Is there anything about your data that you don’t understand? (i.e. what a column heading means). How will you find this out?
There are 7 columns in total and they are listed as: “Country or territory of asylum or residence” “Country or territory of origin”, “Year”, “Refugees”, “Refugees assisted by UNHCR”, “Total refugees and people in refugee-like situations” and “Total refugee and people in refugee-like situations assisted by UNHCR”. Both “Refugees” and “Total refugees and people in refugee-like situations” are footnoted, as they have provided the definitions of what a “refugee” and “people in refugee-like situations” are. They’ve noted “refugees” as “persons recognized as refugees under the 1951 UN Convention/1967 Protocol, the 1969 OAU Convention, in accordance with the UNHCR Statute, persons granted a complementary form of protection and those granted temporary protection. In the absence of Government estimates, UNHCR has estimated the refugee population in 24 industrialized countries based on 10 years of individual refugee recognition,” and “people in refugee-like situation” as “the category of people in refugee-like situations is descriptive in nature and includes groups of persons who are outside their country or territory of origin and who face protection risks similar to those of refugees, but for whom refugee status has, for practical or other reasons, not been ascertained.”
- What are some questions you hope to answer with your data? List at least three. (you don’t need the answers at this point)
The data provided by the United Nations should answer the following questions:
- Which country received the most and least amount of refugees?
- Which country had the most citizen leave their country of origin?
- Which year had the most refugee movement and reference it to a particular event (ie war or natural disaster)?
- How many documented refugees and “people in refugee-like situations” have been helped by the UNHCR?
Compelling choice of a polarizing data set: I am intrigued with how your contemplating framing this.
ReplyDeleteWell formed blog structure, quality use of bullet points, and an aesthetically pleasing background.
Refugees strikes a deep, impactful, emotional chord.
I commend you for not constructing a sensationalist narrative or treading out a dominant, mass media discourse/framing. (TBH, I immediately sought out the State of Palestine Refugee data)
Integrating the social, cultural, political and historical context will provide valuable insights.
You have chosen a very thought-provoking data set! I look forward to seeing how you will be visualizing this data, whether it is through a bar graph(s) or through other means. I am very interested to see which country received the most refugees (as I know some countries are not allowing refugees to enter). I might suggest using a distinctive colour for each country represented in the data, possibly using a colour from their flag to reflect which country it represents.
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ReplyDeleteI think this is a great choice in topic. It's fascinating to put these figures into perspective on a global scale, and the data you chose has strong journalistic qualities. One challenge would be to describe how the data is limited to only those refugees assisted by the UN. Because of this, do you believe the data has a near-perfect correlation to the actual number of refugees? Or is it a case where the figures are askew, due to only including the number of cases that are actually reported (like Sweden having the most reported sexual assaults). Either way, I'll look forward to your presentation.
ReplyDeleteThis is a timely dataset, Lawrence. Your work is clearly thorough and you asked the perfect questions, that we all want answered! My one critique is that it got a little wordy in section 3, which made it difficult to follow. Great work!
ReplyDeleteThis dataset is a great choice because of how relevant it is right now. When an issue as big this is is put into perspective with numbers and visual data It can really wake the world up. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
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