Beyond Words and Pictures: Exploring Representations of Displaced Persons in UNHCR Reports, 2009-2014

Language is a powerful means of conveying meaning and in the field of refugee studies, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has the potential to broadly shape discourses surrounding displacement and displaced persons. This paper provides a qualitative analysis of textual and visual representations of displaced persons
in UNHCR’s Global Reports and Global Appeals from 2009 to 2014 as a means of describing the form such depictions take and of exploring the potential implications of the agency’s language on relief efforts and populations of concern. The study finds that while the texts at times depict persons of concern to UNHCR as active and capable participants in their futures, the dominant representation remains one of passivity. UNHCR documents also tend to depict persons of concern in generalized terms. This representational practice may serve the interests of UNHCR as an organization, but also may have potentially negative implications for the populations it seeks to assist.