Today Google and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees unveiled a refugee crisis mapping project using Google Earth. From the press release:

The UNHCR layers, which were compiled by technical and editorial staff within the agency's communications service, currently focus on three of the refugee agency's global operations - Chad/Darfur, Colombia and Iraq - but plans are under way to expand.

"In 2008, we are going to spread around the world and try and capture all of the major sites and make sure that they are all available so that people can see what the actual situation is on the ground," Johnstone said. "It will make it possible to bring that suffering [of refugees in harsh environments] to people, so people can understand where the responsibilities actually are," he added.

In order to use this tool you need to download Google Earth as well as the UNHCR's mapping layers (you can download everything you need from the UNHCR site, Bird's Eye View of a Refugee's World). Once you install Google Earth, you double click on the UNHCR map file and it all gets loaded into the system.

I took it for a ride just minute before writing this post and found it overwhelming for one reason: If they are focusing only on Chad/Darfur, Colombia and Iraq, there's an incredible amount of information on those maps that's OUTSIDE those countries. Why? Because they're mapping where the refugees end up going to as well as the internal displacement happening in those countries and their regions.

Kudos to Google Earth and UNHCR for finding such a novel way to give a powerful visual perspective on the magnitude of the refugee crisis.