How the IRC, UNHCR, and Danish Refugee Council Are Using AI Right Now (2026)

How the IRC, UNHCR, and Danish Refugee Council Are Using AI Right Now

By 2026, the IRC, UNHCR, and Danish Refugee Council are using AI across forecasting, case management, language services, and field operations. None of the three treat AI as a single product. Each runs a portfolio of projects at different maturity levels, with documented governance and publicly available evaluations. This piece summarises what is operational, what is experimental, and what each organisation has learned.

For the underlying question of whether AI can predict displacement at all, see Can AI Predict the Next Displacement Crisis?.

UNHCR

UNHCR's most documented AI work runs through its Innovation Service and Project Jetson. Jetson is a machine learning system that forecasts refugee arrivals at specific camps and border crossings, including Somali arrivals into Dollo Ado in Ethiopia. It uses conflict, climate, market price, and historical movement data as inputs, and publishes its methodology openly.

Beyond Jetson, UNHCR uses AI for translation and interpretation support in registration centres, for routing and prioritising incoming protection cases, and for analysing large volumes of free-text field reports. The agency has also published an internal AI ethics framework that governs how staff may use generative AI tools with personal data.

The institutional lesson UNHCR has discussed publicly is that forecasting accuracy matters less than operational integration. A forecast that does not change a planning decision adds no value.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC)

The IRC's Airbel Impact Lab leads its AI work. The most visible product is Signpost, a multi-channel information service for refugees and migrants that combines human moderators with AI-assisted translation and content generation. Signpost operates in more than 20 countries in 2026 and provides verified information on legal rights, services, and safe routes.

The IRC also uses AI for cash assistance targeting, for analysing protection monitoring data, and for early warning in food security and child protection. Across these projects, the IRC has published evaluations that highlight both gains in speed and recurring concerns about bias, data minimisation, and accountability when AI is involved in decisions about vulnerable people.

For the broader ethics frame, see The Risks of AI in Humanitarian Work.

Danish Refugee Council (DRC)

The Danish Refugee Council's Foresight platform produces multi-year forced displacement forecasts for more than 25 countries. It uses gradient-boosted models trained on conflict, governance, economic, and demographic indicators, and publishes annual evaluations comparing its forecasts to actual outcomes.

DRC also uses AI in protection monitoring, in mine action survey prioritisation, and in analysing large volumes of qualitative data from field assessments. The organisation has been openly critical of vendor AI tools that promise displacement prediction without methodological transparency, and has positioned Foresight as a deliberately open alternative.

What the Three Share

Across all three organisations, three patterns are visible in 2026. First, AI is used to support human decisions, not to replace them. Second, the projects with the strongest internal support are those that publish their methods and evaluations, allowing peer scrutiny. Third, all three treat data protection for displaced people as a hard constraint, not a feature to be balanced against efficiency. For more on that constraint, see Data Privacy for Displaced People.

Sources and Further Reading

• UNHCR Innovation Service: https://www.unhcr.org/innovation/
• UNHCR Project Jetson documentation: https://jetson.unhcr.org/
• IRC Airbel Impact Lab: https://airbel.rescue.org/
• Signpost global information service: https://www.signpost.ngo/
• Danish Refugee Council Foresight: https://pro.drc.ngo/resources/news/foresight-displacement-forecasts/
• IASC guidance on responsible AI in humanitarian action: https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/

Programme descriptions reflect publicly available documentation from these organisations through mid 2026.