Scholars from the Czech Academy of Sciences will help make key UN documents on refugee policy in post-communist Europe accessible

The Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences has established a strategic cooperarion with the Archives of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. The aim is to jointly process, describe, and make accessible previously inaccessible archival materials relating to the activities of UNHCR in East-Central Europe during the key period of 1994–2004. This project follows on from the ERC grant Unlikely Refuge? led by Michal Frankl. It will enable access to essential sources for understanding refugee policy in post-communist countries.

After the collapse of the state socialist regimes, countries such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland had to cope with new forms of migration and large groups of refugees. Within a short period of time, they all adopted new laws and built institutions for assessing asylum applications. However, UNHCR archival documents from this pivotal period are still difficult for researchers to access.

The aim of the newly established cooperation is to change this situation. UNHCR will create a detailed archival inventory of its European Office's collections from 1994–2004 and make this metadata available in its online catalog. The Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences (MÚA AV ČR), which has unique knowledge of the actors, events, and context thanks to its long-term research, will provide UNHCR with key expert support. This will help to more accurately identify, describe, and place the archival materials in a broader context. The results will then be used in the MÚA AV ČR's follow-up research project MyGRACE (funded by OP JAK) and will be made available to the entire international research community.

"For us, this collaboration is the culmination of many years of work and a series of research stays by our scholars at the UNHCR archives in Geneva," says Rudolf Kučera, director of the MÚA. "While we have primarily been in the role of researchers until now, we are now becoming partners who help make these valuable sources accessible. It is a great example of how we, as a Czech institution, can bring added value that serves a broad international interest. Research into refugee regimes is critical to understanding current debates on migration, and we are pleased to contribute to making key sources for further study accessible."

Heather Faulkner, Senior Archivist at UNHCR, adds: "We greatly appreciate the cooperation agreement we have signed with the Masaryk Institute and the Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences. This collaboration will greatly support our efforts to maintain open access to the UNHCR archives and provide us with much-needed capacity to make the recorded memory of forced displacement available for research."

The results of the cooperation will be fully available in the UNHCR Archive's online catalog by the end of 2026.

The Records and Archives Section of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency is headquartered in Geneva. It captures, preserves and makes accessible records relating to the execution of the UNHCR mandate since its establishment in 1950. Its archival collections are a key source for studying the history of refugees and international protection around the world.

About the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences
The Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences is a leading Czech scientific institution focused on research into modern history of the 19th and 20th centuries. As part of international projects, it has long been involved in research into migration, refugees, and humanitarianism in East-Central Europe.

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