Overview

Displacement statistics from the keyless UNHCR Refugee Data Finder API: refugee, asylum-seeker, IDP, and stateless populations by country of origin and asylum from 1951, asylum applications and decisions from 2000, and returns, resettlement, and naturalisation from 1959. Resolve country names to ISO3 codes, pull annual figures with notes on how to read them, and run SQL over results too large to return inline. Runs as a stdio process or a local Streamable HTTP server.

Tools

unhcr_dataframe_drop is registered only when UNHCR_DATAFRAME_DROP_ENABLED=true; the other eight tools are always advertised.

Dataframe workflow

1. A unhcr_get_* call whose full result exceeds limit, or that sets stage: true, stages every row as a df_XXXXX_XXXXX table and returns its handle in dataset.
2. unhcr_dataframe_describe lists the staged tables with their columns, source call, and expiry. Listing is off over HTTP with MCP_AUTH_MODE=none, so there describe each table by the name in dataset.
3. unhcr_dataframe_query runs one read-only DuckDB SELECT across them; register_as saves the result as a new table for the next query.
4. Tables expire after UNHCR_DATASET_TTL_SECONDS (24 hours by default). With UNHCR_DATAFRAME_DROP_ENABLED=true, unhcr_dataframe_drop removes one sooner. Once a tenant's staged rows pass 1,000,000, the oldest tables are evicted first, and the call that pushed the total over names them in evicted.

Dataframes run on DuckDB's native binding, which the npm and Docker installs carry. The Claude Desktop .mcpb bundle ships without it, so there the data tools answer inline only. Set CANVAS_PROVIDER_TYPE=none to turn dataframes off anywhere.

Capability reference

The five unhcr_get_* tools share one contract:

• Scope: origin and asylum take ISO3 codes, case-insensitive, as a string or a list, up to 50 each. ISO2 codes are rewritten to ISO3; UNHCR's own codes and country names are rejected. Each listed code returns its own rows, and an omitted dimension is summed into one row unless expand (origin, asylum, or both) lists every country. year_from / year_to default to the dataset's span and are clamped to it.
• Rows: the full result is sorted by sort_by, then cut to limit (1–500, default 100). Where dataframes are on, the full set of a larger result is staged, and stage: true stages a result that fits too.
• Output: total_rows, complete (false when UNHCR_MAX_ROWS stopped the fetch), measure (stock or flow), applied_scope, latest_year, dataset when staged, data_notes, and attribution.
• Errors: unknown_country_code, invalid_year_window, year_out_of_coverage, conflicting_scope, and the retryable upstream_busy, which carries retryAfter.

unhcr_list_reference _tool

• topic: countries, regions, coverage, population_types, or asylum_codes. With countries, name_contains keeps countries whose names contain every word given, or whose ISO3, ISO2, or UNHCR code equals one; there is no fuzzy matching
• coverage gives each dataset's first_year, latest_year, and measure, plus the month of the current nowcast
• Countries, regions, and coverage come from the live API and are cached for 24 hours; population types and asylum codes are static, and asylum codes UNHCR's methodology does not define carry documented: false

unhcr_get_population _tool

• Year-end stocks refugees, asylum_seekers, oip, idps, stateless, ooc, and hst, plus returned_refugees and returned_idps, which are flows during the year; sort_by takes any of them or year
• unrwa_refugees (Palestine refugees registered with UNRWA) and idmc_conflict_idps (IDMC's conflict-IDP estimate) sit beside a row when that series has one and are never added into UNHCR's counts. Matching UNHCR footnotes come back too, up to 20, with footnotes_total
• include_nowcast: true appends UNHCR's current-year monthly estimate of refugees and asylum-seekers by asylum country; it is skipped when origin lists codes

unhcr_get_demographics _tool

• population_types filters to REF, ASY, OIP, IDP, STA, OOC, HST, RET, or RDP; sort_by takes year or total
• Each row is one population type: total, fourteen sex × age bands (female_0_4 … female_60_plus, female_unknown_age, female_total, and the male_* twins), disaggregated, and sex_disaggregated_share (0–1). Bands are null where UNHCR has no breakdown
• Totals come from a separate collection and need not match unhcr_get_population; matching footnotes come back as there

unhcr_get_asylum_applications _tool

• split_by names which of authority, stage, and decision_level stay separate rows (default ["stage"]; [] gives one total per year, scope, and unit). stages filters before summing, e.g. ["N"] for new applications; sort_by takes year or applied
• Each row lists the authorities, stages, and decision_levels codes summed into it, its unit (persons or cases), and applied. Cases are never added to persons

unhcr_get_asylum_decisions _tool

• split_by names which of authority and decision_level stay separate rows (default [], all summed, as UNHCR does for its rates). decision_levels filters before summing, e.g. ["FI"] for first instance
• Each row carries recognized, complementary_protection, rejected, otherwise_closed, total_decisions, substantive_decisions, and a unit, plus refugee_recognition_rate and total_protection_rate as percentages of substantive decisions. A rate is null when that denominator is 0 or null
• sort_by takes year or a count (total_decisions, substantive_decisions, recognized, rejected); rates are not sortable

unhcr_get_solutions _tool

• Flows returned_refugees, resettlement, naturalisation, and returned_idps; sort_by takes any of them or year. Matching footnotes come back as with population
• The asylum country means something different per column: the country refugees returned from, the country they were resettled to, the country that naturalised them. IDP returns sit on the origin country itself