ABSTRACT
Let us return to Frank, bent over his Excel spreadsheets (see Chapter 5). If humanitarian quantification could be condensed into legal categories, his task would have been easy enough. Since it is not possible, from an international law perspective, to be a “refugee,” an “asylum seeker,” an “internally displaced person,” a “third-country national,” and part of the “host population” all at the same time, these numbers would add up well. In such a configuration, the “humanitarian caseload” would be presented as a summary of watertight categories. If needs were summarized according to legal status, UNHCR could produce the ensemble of necessary figures practically on its own, or with IOM, and Frank’s work, as well as that of the OCHA, would be superfluous.
