New partnership with the UN's High Commission for Refugees
On 18 March 2026, the same day of the latest Nuffield Humanitarian Forum meeting, Professorial Fellow Andrew Thompson, CBE met with the UK Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ms Vicky Tennant, to sign and finalise a research collaboration agreement between the UN agency and Nuffield College.
The research collaboration will focus on producing two case studies regarding the impact of donors' cuts to UNHCR on the agency's ability to reduce the risks of human trafficking, enslavement, and exploitation among refugees in crisis contexts. This exercise involves Nuffield Postdoctoral Research Fellow Cesare Vagge and DPhil in Global History student Marly Tiburcio-Carneiro.
Cesare and Marly are co-authors of the Framework of Analysis on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking: A Tool for Prevention alongside Professor Thompson on behalf of the Global Commission on Modern Slavery. This new collaboration, working closely with UNHCR colleagues, will map the risk factors identified in the Prevention Framework onto cuts in key UNHCR services for the protection of refugees. Cesare and Marly will then assess the extent to which cuts are likely to increase refugees' vulnerability to modern slavery and human trafficking, with a particular focus on refugee camps in Bangladesh and Ethiopia.
This work is due to be completed by the end of May 2026, and may pave the way to wider collaborations between the College and UNHCR in the context of the 75th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention in July 2026.
Pictured above, Andrew Thompson and UK Representative for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Vicky Tennant, signing the agreement on 18 March 2026