unhcrwash

The goal of unhcrwash is to make available data on WASH indicators in refugee camps and settlements.

Data source and status

This dataset was collected from the UNHCR Information Management System (IRIS) and was published on the UNHCR WASH dashboard. That source is no longer available. The former download URL, https://wash.unhcr.org/dashboard/data/unhcr_irhis_all_data.csv, now returns an HTTP redirect to a UNHCR handbook page rather than a CSV. The whole wash.unhcr.org dashboard has been retired, and the underlying data has moved into the login-gated iRHIS portal at his.unhcr.org.

An up-to-date version of this dataset can therefore no longer be generated from the original source. The data shipped here is a fixed historical snapshot covering 226 sites and 35 countries from 2013 to 2024.

The reason for the login is access control at the iRHIS system level, applied under UNHCR’s General Policy on Personal Data Protection and Privacy (UNHCR/HCP/2022/02). iRHIS also holds health and nutrition data, and UNHCR controls access to the platform as a whole.

The data in this package is not itself sensitive. Every record is a site-level aggregate WASH indicator (for example, persons per toilet, litres of water per person per day, percentage of households with access to soap). It contains no personal data, no individual or household records, and no geocoordinates, so it carries no data-protection concern and is appropriate to publish as open data.

Installation

You can install the development version of unhcrwash from GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
# devtools::install_github("openwashdata/unhcrwash")
install.packages("unhcrwash", repos = c('https://openwashdata.r-universe.dev', 'https://cloud.r-project.org'))

## Run the following code in console if you don't have the packages
## install.packages(c("dplyr", "knitr", "readr", "stringr", "gt", "kableExtra"))
library(dplyr)
library(knitr)
library(readr)
library(stringr)
library(gt)
library(kableExtra)

Alternatively, you can download the individual datasets as a CSV or XLSX file from the table below.

dataset	CSV	XLSX
unhcrwash	Download CSV	Download XLSX

Data

The package provides access to WASH indicators in refugee camps and settlements

library(unhcrwash)

unhcrwash

The dataset unhcrwash contains data about WASH indicators in refugee camps and settlements. It has 6423 observations and 27 variables

unhcrwash |> 
  head(3) |> 
  gt::gt() |>
  gt::as_raw_html()

For an overview of the variable names, see the following table.

Example

library(unhcrwash)

# Average Water Availability by Country 
unhcrwash |> dplyr::group_by(country) |> 
  dplyr::summarise(avg_water_avail = mean(liters_per_person_per_day, na.rm = TRUE)) |> 
  dplyr::arrange(desc(avg_water_avail)) |> 
  head(5) |> 
  gt::gt() |> 
  gt::as_raw_html()

library(ggplot2)
# Toilet availability
unhcrwash |> 
  dplyr::mutate(year = lubridate::year(as.Date(start_date))) |>  # Extract year as whole number
  dplyr::filter(!is.na(year) & !is.na(persons_per_toilet)) |>    # Remove missing values
  dplyr::group_by(year) |> 
  dplyr::summarise(avg_persons_per_toilet = mean(persons_per_toilet, na.rm = TRUE)) |> 
  ggplot2::ggplot(aes(x = year, y = avg_persons_per_toilet)) +
  ggplot2::geom_line() +
  ggplot2::labs(title = "Average Persons per Toilet in Refugee Camps",
                x = "Year",
                y = "Average persons per toilet") +
  ggplot2::theme_minimal()

# Countries with highest refugee populations
unhcrwash |> 
  dplyr::group_by(country) |> 
  dplyr::summarise(total_population = sum(refugee_pop, na.rm = TRUE)) |> 
  dplyr::arrange(desc(total_population)) |> 
  head(5) |> 
  gt::gt() |> 
  gt::as_raw_html()

License

Data are available as CC-BY.

Citation

Published by openwashdata, https://openwashdata.org.

Please cite this package using:

citation("unhcrwash")
#> To cite package 'unhcrwash' in publications use:
#> 
#>   Schöbitz L, Dubey Y (2026). "unhcrwash: WASH Data From Refugee Camps
#>   and Settlements (UNHCR)." doi:10.5281/zenodo.14185116
#>   <https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14185116>.
#>   <https://github.com/openwashdata/unhcrwash>.
#> 
#> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
#> 
#>   @Misc{schobitz_etall:2026,
#>     title = {unhcrwash: WASH Data From Refugee Camps and Settlements (UNHCR)},
#>     author = {Lars Schöbitz and Yash Dubey},
#>     year = {2026},
#>     doi = {10.5281/zenodo.14185116},
#>     url = {https://github.com/openwashdata/unhcrwash},
#>     abstract = {This is a dataset on WASH indicators in refugee camps and settlements. The data was collected from the UNHCR Information Management System (IRIS) and was available on the UNHCR WASH dashboard. This dataset includes data from 226 sites and 35 countries. The source dashboard has since been retired and the data now sits behind the login-gated iRHIS portal, so this dataset is a fixed historical snapshot (2013 to 2024) that can no longer be regenerated.},
#>     keywords = {open data,washdata,refugee camps,refugee settlements,humanitarian WASH,water supply,sanitation,hygiene,UNHCR},
#>     version = {1.1.1},
#>   }