How Mapmaking Brings Communities Closer Together
Mapping projects at two UNHCR offices not only guide refugees in forging a new life path. They create closer connections among everyone involved.
By Amy Lynn Smith, Independent Writer + Strategist
Imagine being dropped into the middle of a new place with absolutely no way to get your bearings. No map, no compass, and perhaps not even the ability to ask for directions because you don’t speak the language.
Without a map to guide you, it can be difficult — if not impossible — to find your way forward. Especially for refugees and other displaced people, maps serve a variety of purposes. Beyond helping people find their way around unfamiliar territory, maps can be a guide to resources and support services for refugees within settlements or urban settings.
Two projects supported by the UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) Innovation Service’s 2019–2020 Innovation Fund focus on mapping as a solution to help refugees and other displaced people navigate their new homes. But because the projects include both people of concern and host communities in the mapping process, they also create a stronger sense of community and even foster potential career opportunities for refugees by teaching them sought-after skills.
Both of these projects address the Innovation Fund’s current focus on improved decision-making. Participatory mapping, which involves the development of maps by local communities, lets participants — including refugees, partner organizations, and host community leaders — identify their own community landmarks and the most important areas where they live. This leads to better decision-making by empowering the people who live in the community to determine the most pressing needs, such as infrastructure improvements, as one example.
Jordan: Putting the power of maps in refugees’ hands
Mapping isn’t new to the team at Jordan’s Mafraq UNHCR Sub Office, where their responsibilities include oversight of the Za’atari Refugee Camp. About three years ago, they created the Refugee Geographic Information Systems Project (RefuGIS) with the support of Innovation Fund 1.0. According to Irene Omondi, head of the Mafraq Sub Office, RefuGIS is the first UNHCR project to empower refugees to use mapping technology including Geographic Information and Communication technology (GeoICTs), such as digital maps, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Global Positioning Systems (GPS). RefuGIS team members, which include displaced people living in the camp — ranging in age from 20 to 60 years old — have learned important livelihood skills including cartography; data visualization, collection, and analysis; and computer programming. Thanks to this training, refugees created professional-grade maps of their environment. These maps are of such high quality that they are used by UNHCR and other organizations for planning and implementation.
RefuGIS was an excellent start, but the UNHCR team wanted to expand the concept to engage displaced people in decision-making through participatory strategies.
“Something I was very passionate about was seeing refugees being able to answer the questions I had as a service provider, in terms of the things they need,” Omondi explains. “So the idea to expand on our mapping activities came from this simple way of wanting to get information from the refugees and also train those who can do this work — a community-based approach where refugees are part of a sustainable solution.”
According to Brian Tomaszewski, Ph.D., Associate Professor at the Center for Geographic Information Science & Technology at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, who first came to the camp to work with the team in 2015, “Maps are power — they can make the world happen.”
As he explains, Za’atari camp, which is home to 80,000 people, is like a small city. Just like any city, mapping is integral to planning and development. This project puts the power of mapping and, ultimately, decision-making, into the hands of refugees.
“Mapping is a very specialized skill that can be at times challenging to obtain,” Dr. Tomaszewski explains. “To have mapping capacity within the camp itself is a great opportunity for refugees to not only engage more with the community but to learn new and marketable skills.”
Abdallah Ibrahim, Senior Protection Associate — Community-Based Protection at the Sub Office and the camp, adds that as someone who worked in GIS before joining UNHCR, he was pleasantly surprised to see so many refugees involved in mapping.
“These talented refugees took it on themselves to really learn this craft to empower their communities, the decisions they make, and everyone around them,” he says.
Moving mapping forward
Although refugees were already part of the mapping process, the Sub Office team focused on giving them the tools to use mapping for improved decision-making as part of their project supported by the Innovation Fund, which they refer to as RefuGIS 2. The fact that refugees themselves can gather information and have the capacity to produce maps was inherent to the transformation of how the inputs were collected and translated into maps, which went on to inform planning. This was seen in the creation of youth services maps, winterization, and infrastructure maps.
“When you ask people who have detailed, first-hand knowledge at the block level of the various activities,” Dr. Tomaszewski explains, “it’s a clear example of how a map drawn by users on the ground is very different than what someone sees from the outside.”
Now, the community — both refugees and host community members — are asked what information they need most.
“As one example, the community just didn’t understand why some roads to school were being used by kids rather than others,” Ibrahim says. “When we mapped the roads, we found that some roads were too narrow, or had large potholes that made them difficult to ride on with bikes, the most common form of transportation in the camp.”
Based on the data mapped by refugees who walked the roads to provide data, UNHCR can make more strategic decisions about which roads to repair and maintain differently.
This is just one of countless examples of the ways refugees trained in Geographic Information Systems and mapping are not only contributing to improving their communities, but building invaluable skills, both for their own employment potential and UNHCR’s operations, by providing the data needed for improved decision-making.
“I’ve been humbled by this whole experience in the learning that happens for us, because of the community-driven solutions that come out of GIS,” Omondi says. “This is a very sustainable solution that can apply to many situations, such as working with our health colleagues to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, by mapping the community shelter shielding plan for at-risk groups such as the elderly.”
This same idea could be used across UNHCR and beyond, making it not only sustainable but replicable.
“It’s a wonderful example of innovation fostering more innovation,” Dr. Tomaszewski says. “When I first came to the camp I was struck by the stories of trauma and violence the people there had been living in before arriving there. But the project gave them hope and livelihoods, and it’s such an amazing human story because it just keeps going — not just within the camp, but potentially in nearby cities and even other countries around the world.”
Ecuador: Mapping safe spaces for the LGBTI community
It’s challenging enough to be forced to leave your home country and settle in a new one. But it can be even more complicated when you’re part of a community that’s frequently discriminated against, such as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) community. This is especially true in a country like Ecuador, where refugees and other displaced people aren’t living in settlements, but are instead fully integrated into their host communities, often in urban settings, where they don’t have the same level of insulation from prejudice they might have in a settlement.
Refugees in Ecuador, as in many other parts of the world, can face discrimination, which is heightened by the homophobia that exists at some level nearly everywhere. So a team based in Quito led by Francis Fayolle, a former Associate in Field Protection, applied to the Innovation Fund to support a project to map all of the LGBTI-friendly businesses, resources, and civil society organizations available to displaced LGBTI people now living in Ecuador.
“How do you integrate yourself into a new society?” Fayolle explains. “Refugees struggle to construct a network of people they can trust on things, even among their own people, because most of them are used to conflict. It’s especially difficult for LGBTI people, the population that’s discriminated against the most.”
Members of the LGBTI community knew about safe spaces where they could go without fear of discrimination, but that information was usually inside the heads of individuals. UNHCR saw the need to make this information available to the entire community, so UNHCR developed a strategy — and a community-based team — to help them gather the information from individuals and businesses and put it into a database to create a map.
In some cases, the project was also made more complex because certain businesses would rather not publicly announce that they welcome LGBTI people. That’s why UNHCR took an inclusive intelligence approach by working through a number of grassroots organizations in Quito and Esmeraldas. All of the organizations are focused on some aspect of LGBTI rights and inclusion, and are well established in their local communities.
“We felt it was better to go through the grassroots organizations, because they were already known and trusted by the LGBTI community and know the businesses in their area,” Fayolle says. “It’s always important to include the members of the community, because it not only brings human insight into a project, especially one that’s data-based, but also helps strengthen ties across the community.”
Creating maps and connections
The project began with workshops with the grassroots organizations, where UNHCR assessed the current status of how the LGBTI community was treated and how the organizations and the people they support were connected via social networks. That was followed by a technical workshop with both the organizations and members of the LGBTI community they brought into the project, purposely selecting a diverse group of participants.
Through this workshop, UNHCR gathered information on LGBTI-friendly businesses and organizations. This included many mainstream establishments that are tolerant, meaning that LGBTI people reported they never had problems there.
Once the data was collected, UNHCR began drafting a map, although the project has had to slow down or pause periodically, first due to protests in Ecuador last fall and, more recently, because of COVID-19. But the team has pressed on as best they can, working with the LGBTI community to review the map — which uses different colors to identify various types of businesses, such as restaurants, spas, sports clubs, and more — and help refine it. The ultimate goal is to provide the map electronically, so users can click on a type of establishment and get more information about it. Businesses that choose to can also display signage by their entrance indicating they are LGBTI-friendly.
But while the mapping project continues to build a database that can be regularly updated, the project has helped create a stronger sense of community between LGBTI people and others in the cities where they live.
Before COVID-19 put restrictions on movement, groups within the LGBTI community came together to talk about challenges and solutions. For example, an artist painted murals to further improve integration and acceptance of the LGBTI community.
“The mural has been welcomed by some and criticized by others,” Fayolle says, “but at least the LGBTI topic is something people are considering instead of completely ignoring it. It’s better to make LGBTI people visible, so more than mapping the project has also shown UNHCR’s support for the civil society initiatives of the LGBTI community.”
In addition, he says, it’s strengthened the relationships UNHCR has already established with the LGBTI community in Ecuador, and is building trust between humanitarian organizations and people of concern.
“The LGBTI community sees UNHCR as an ally,” Fayolle says. “And because we were working both with the individuals and the organizations, we really learned from each other, which was a very positive outcome.”
Watch for a second story, with more on this and other Innovation Fund-supported projects in Ecuador.
