The world has witnessed disheartening records in recent years. Many more people are being forced to leave their homes compared to a decade ago – over 130 million people are expected be forcibly displaced and stateless in 2024. In such a surge, every minute counts when providing help. And a mobile app helps to save nine of these minutes for each refugee.
The refugee situation has been greatly exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, but the numbers had already been alarming. If the refugees were to form one country, it would be the world’s 13th most populous – with more people than Egypt, Türkiye or Germany.
And where are the refugees fleeing from? Currently, over half come from three countries in crisis – Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. And it’s a sad reality that millions are children. Nearly 400,000 are born each year while their families are fleeing their homes, making them refugees from birth.
Refugee crisis impacts Slovakia
Inhabitants of Slovakia, a country in the Central Europe, used to experience previous refugee crises from afar – mainly from the media, but that changed with the war in Ukraine. For the first time, Slovaks have had first-hand experience of the strain that a sizable refugee influx can have on the state and non-profit sector. Slovakia and neighboring countries have sought to rise to the challenge by quickly helping Ukrainians. Yet the first weeks of the crisis brought long queues, anxiety, and exhaustion.
In such situations, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and its team use the RApp, developed by a Slovak company Resco using the Mobile App Development Toolkit. First tested in the Amazon region in Brazil, the app is now in use worldwide.
The Slovak IT company ensured that their app for refugees also works in places without internet access – quite common in desert areas, for example.
The mobile app also works offline
During the influx of refugees from Ukraine, RApp was put to use in Slovakia and neighboring countries. To speed up processes, they opted for a solution that has been field-proven in African deserts.
“We have good internet connectivity in Slovakia, but the sudden surge caused an overload of the standard infrastructure. That’s why we ended up using the app’s offline mode here too,” said Lukáš Leško, Resco’s Head of Product Support.
In this mode, data can be collected even without direct server connection. Data is subsequently synchronized when internet connection is available. According to David Birt – Chief of Development & Support Unit at UNHCR – the Resco app has reduced registration time per refugee from fifteen to four minutes. “The Resco platform has radically reduced our dependency on pen & paper as we move towards deploying digital tools,” he observed.
Data for improvement was collected in the field
Resco employees also had first-hand experience of the Ukrainian refugee crisis in Slovakia. They visited UNHCR refugee camps in Slovak cities Bratislava and Košice several times last summer. Each such visit helps them to plan further improvements and simplify work of UNHCR coordinators, even outside their offices.
The cooperation with UNHCR is long-term, and Resco is constantly developing new app modules to meet new and emerging challenges in the field. The app goes beyond registration and staff can leverage the offline platform to sync with critical assistance programmes and protection services.
“The entire Resco team was involved in the app development. UNHCR uses everything we’ve developed so far, along with many specific features tailored directly to their needs,” says Lukáš Leško.
In an ideal world, refugee registration apps would not be necessary. But since we don’t live in an ideal world, RApp assists in processing data for thousands of users in 81 countries. And IT experts’ skills have enabled millions of people to reach safety faster.