Privacy Policy

What does this Privacy Policy cover?

Taking care of your information is important to us.  This Privacy Policy sets out how we collect, use and store your personal data on the Refworld site and what steps we take to protect your privacy and personal data. 

Please read our Privacy Policy carefully before using our site and refer back to it regularly to check for updates. Remember, by accessing and using this site, you agree to all provisions of this Privacy Policy. 

What is Personal Data?

For the purposes of this policy, “Personal Data” is any information that enables us to identify you, directly or indirectly, by reference to any identifiers such as your name, address, phone number, email address, identification number, location data, online identifier or one or more factors specific to you as an individual. 

In brief: How do we protect your Personal Data?

• We will not use your Personal Data other than for the purposes described in this policy.

• We will not sell your Personal Data.

• We will not keep your Personal Data for longer than is necessary for the stated purposes except to the extent required by applicable UNHCR internal rules and regulations.

• We will take all reasonable and necessary technical and organizational measures to protect your Personal Data. For example, we use third parties to host our website and provide services to us. We have implemented the necessary contractual arrangements to ensure the confidentiality and security of your personal data we share with them.

1. WHAT PERSONAL DATA DO WE COLLECT FROM YOU?

Account Information

In order to access this site and create an account, certain types of Personal Data will be captured, such as name, city/town, country, e-mail address, username and password. Together with other types of Personal Data collected from you based on your consent (see below regarding such collection), this data will be used to create and maintain your user profile. Only the starred fields are mandatory when creating your account.  

Additional data such as interests, profile picture, or additional contact details or social profiles can optionally be added by users on their profile. All of these details are optional.

Communications

If you contact us directly, we may receive additional information about you. For example, when you contact our Refworld team, we may receive your name, email address, phone number, the contents of a message or attachments that you may send to us, and other information you choose to provide. We remind you to never communicate your password by email, even with the Refworld team or another UNHCR staff member. 

Surveys, Events and Newsletters

We may collect information from you when you participate in surveys, or events posted on this site or when you sign up for our newsletters. 

2. HOW DO WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA?

We will use your Personal Data only for the purposes indicated below and only when it is strictly necessary: 

To communicate with you

  • If you have created an account with us, we may send you a message to check and see if there is any help we can give or check whether you encountered any problems. And we may reach out to you to verify if the email or postal address we hold for you is correct.
  • Communicate with you (e.g. updates and system notifications) in connection with your account to provide you with services, such as “password reset” options.

To engage support from you and other potential supporters

  • Inform you about latest developments. You may unsubscribe from any of these communications.

To protect our legal rights

  • Enforce our Terms of Use, to defend our legal rights, and to comply with our legal obligations and policies.

Aggregate Data

  • We may de-identify (i.e. anonymize) and aggregate information collected through our sites for statistical analysis and other legitimate purposes, including in research studies.

3. HOW DO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL DATA?

We generally do not share your Personal Data. We may share it only for the purposes indicated below and only when it is strictly necessary.

Why and how do we share your Personal Data?

  • To third parties, such as servers and databases providers, for storage purposes;
  • We may also disclose your Personal Data with your consent. We may seek your permission in various ways. For example, we may present you with an “opt-in” prompt when you set up an account or access certain content.
  • We may de-identify (i.e. anonymize), aggregate and share information collected through the site to third party providers for statistical analysis and other legitimate purposes, including in research studies, publications, better understand the usage of the Refworld website and improve the operation of the site. 

We will only transfer your Personal Data to trusted third parties who provide sufficient guarantees that your Personal Data will be kept secure. 

4. HOW CAN YOU CONTROL YOUR PERSONAL DATA?

You can edit most of your profile details at any time by logging into your account and selecting account management.

You can request the deletion of your account by contacting us.

5. HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR PERSONAL DATA?

We will only use and store your Personal Data for so long as it is required for the purposes it was collected for and as specified in UNHCR’s retention policy. We use your Personal Data as necessary to comply with our obligations, resolve disputes, or enforce our agreements and rights. Otherwise, we will seek to delete your Personal Data within a month timeframe upon your written request.

6. IS THE REFWORLD WEBSITE SECURED?

We are committed to protecting your Personal Data through the implementation of encryption methods, secured login, firewalls, regular security patches and antivirus. Unfortunately, such precautions may not be sufficient to guarantee the complete security of your data. It is always a possibility that third parties may unlawfully intercept or access your Personal Data or private communications. So, although we work extremely hard to safeguard your Personal Data, we cannot guarantee that your information or communications will always remain private. 

We also ask that you do your part to safeguard your Personal Data. Select and protect your password appropriately. Limit access to your account and sign out of your account once you have finished using this site. Also, be careful about connecting to the site using an insecure Wi-Fi. Public Wi-Fi, for example, is inherently insecure — so be cautious.

Should you have reasons to question the integrity of this site or your data, please do promptly contact us.

7. LINKS TO THIRD-PARTY SITES REFERENCED OR EMBEDDED ON THE SITE

This website contains links to other websites that are not covered by this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy applies only to the processing of your Personal Data on this website. It does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy, information, or other practices of any third parties, including any third party operating any site or service to which this site links. The inclusion of a link on this website does not imply endorsement of the linked site or service by us. Please be aware that the terms of this Privacy Policy do not apply to these outside websites or content, or to any collection of data after you click on links to such outside websites.

8. NOTIFICATIONS OF CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

If we make changes to our privacy practices, we will post a notification to this website alerting that the Privacy Policy has been amended. Such changes will be effective immediately upon posting them to this site. For this reason, we encourage you to check our Privacy Policy frequently.  The “Last Updated” date at the bottom of this page indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Your continued use of this website following these changes means that you accept the revised Privacy Policy.

9. COOKIES

When you use this website, we and our third-party service providers may collect information about you and your device through automated means, such as cookies and web server logs. Cookies are small text files which identify your computer, phone, and other devices to our server. By using this website, you consent to the placement of cookies and similar technologies in your browser in accordance with this Privacy Policy. The information collected in this manner includes your IP address, network location, what browser you are using, device IDs and characteristics, operating system version, language preferences, referring URLs, and information about the usage of this site.

We use this information, for example, to ensure that the site functions properly, to determine how many users have visited certain pages, or to prevent fraud. We use IP address information to derive location of the device used to access the website. We also work with analytics providers, such as Google Analytics which use cookies and similar technologies to collect and analyze information about use of the site and report on activities and trends. This service may also collect information about the use of other websites, apps, and online resources. You can learn more about Google’s practices by going to https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/.

The table below identifies the cookies we may use on this site and explains the purposes for which they are used.  Please note that we may update the information contained in this table from time to time.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

First party

HostNameDurationDescription
refworld.org_dc_gtm_UA-xxxxxxxxA few secondsThis cookie is associated with sites using Google Tag Manager to load other scripts and code into a page. Where it is used it may be regarded as Strictly Necessary as without it, other scripts may not function correctly. The end of the name is a unique number which is also an identifier for an associated Google Analytics account.
refworld.orgRW_cookie_consent30 daysThis cookie is set by the browser and records user consent for cookies.

Third party

HostNameDurationDescription
unhcr.org__cf_bmA few secondsThis is a Cloudflare cookie. It is part of Cloudflare's Bot Management service and helps to manage incoming traffic that matches criteria associated with bots.

Performance Cookies

First party

HostNameDurationDescription
refworld.org_gidA few secondsThis cookie name is associated with Google Analytics. This appears to be a new cookie and as of Spring 2017 and is to store and count the number of pages visited by the visitor. It appears to store and update a unique value for each page visited._gid
refworld.org_ga1 yearThis cookie name is associated with Google Analytics - which is a significant update to Google's more commonly used analytics service. This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports. By default it is set to expire after 2 years, although this is customisable by website owners.
refworld.org_ga1 yearThis cookie name is associated with Google Analytics - which is a significant update to Google's more commonly used analytics service. This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports. By default it is set to expire after 2 years, although this is customisable by website owners.
refworld.org_rup_ga_EVDQTJ4LMY1 yearThis cookie name is associated with Google Analytics - which is a significant update to Google's more commonly used analytics service. This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports. By default it is set to expire after 2 years, although this is customisable by website owners.
refworld.org_rup_ga1 yearThis cookie name is associated with Google Analytics - which is a significant update to Google's more commonly used analytics service. This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports. By default it is set to expire after 2 years, although this is customisable by website owners.
refworld.org_ga_xxxxxxxxxx1 yearThis cookie name is associated with Google Analytics - which is a significant update to Google's more commonly used analytics service. This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports. By default it is set to expire after 2 years, although this is customisable by website owners.

If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, most browsers allow you to automatically decline cookies or be given the choice of declining or accepting the transfer to your computer of a particular cookie (or cookies) from a particular site. You may also wish to refer to http://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/index.html for more general information about cookies.  If, however, you do not accept the UNHCR’s cookies, you may experience some inconvenience in your use of this site.  In order to use the site, you will need to ensure that your browser is configured to accept cookies from the site. You can delete cookies after each visit, if you wish to.

10. CONTACT US

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us.

Latest revision of this page: 08 January 2024