Legal Fellow

October 27, 2026

H (no hardship)

Family

Fellow

UNHCR  Legal Fellowships in the United States

Background
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, seeks several post-graduate Legal Fellows to work full-time in the Protection and Solutions Unit (PSU) at UNHCR’s Multi-Country Office in Washington, D.C. The fellowship has a duration of one year, starting in September 2027. UNHCR will work with each selected fellow to craft a portfolio of work that will provide considerable opportunity for professional development while contributing to UNHCR’s strategic objectives.

Each fellow is required to obtain external funding for the full duration of their fellowship (see details under Terms of Fellowship below), and should indicate in their initial application how they intend to seek that funding.
UNHCR’s PSU team serves asylum-seekers, refugees, and stateless persons who are in the United States or the northern Caribbean or seeking to access protection in these countries and territories. PSU seeks to ensure that law and policy in these locations are aligned with international refugee law and works with stakeholders to ensure protection for forcibly displaced and stateless persons in the area that it covers.
UNHCR Legal Fellows during the  cycle will be based in Washington D.C.

PSU Legal Fellowships
UNHCR’s PSU team serves asylum-seekers, refugees, and stateless persons in the United States or the northern Caribbean or seeking to access protection in these countries and territories. PSU seeks to ensure that law and policy in these locations are aligned with international refugee law and works with stakeholders to ensure protection for forcibly displaced and stateless persons in the area that it covers.
PSU provides comments on proposed legislation and regulations, submits amicus briefs on select international legal issues, and shares information on displacement trends, both globally and regionally. In addition, PSU focuses on regional protection issues, i.e. in the Americas, following U.S. diplomatic engagement with other asylum countries throughout the hemisphere, as well as related bilateral and multilateral initiatives. In the realm of statelessness, PSU conducts trainings and presentations on statelessness and nationality to a range of audiences and provides guidance on the potential stateless status of individuals who contact the office.

PSU also gathers information on the protection situation of forcibly displaced and stateless persons at different stages of the asylum process, including at land borders and ports of entry, in detention, and in U.S. immigration courts, and works to develop pragmatic policy and practice options for the relevant authorities. Additionally, PSU provides information on the laws, policies, and procedures for seeking asylum and related protection in the United States to persons of concern to UNHCR.
The Legal Fellows’ areas of potential engagement include law and policy analysis at the intersection of international and domestic law, regional protection policy, monitoring of protection conditions, and individual case support.

• Must be a 2027 degree candidate or recent graduate from a U.S. law school.
• Must have completed coursework in international law; refugee law; and/or human rights; additional coursework in U.S. immigration law preferable.
• Preference for experience in U.S. asylum; refugee law; and/or other topics related to refugees, asylum-seekers, and statelessness.
• Experience with legal clinics in law school, or other forms of direct service experience with…