NEW YORK - Too often, women’s names have been erased from history, including at the signing of the landmark Refugee Convention in 1951. But, this is no longer the case for Margaret (Kitchen) Bruce, thanks to tenacious deep diving archive teams from across the UN Organization.

To mark World Refugee Day, celebrated annually on 20 June, we’re telling you what was uncovered by these ambitious archivists from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, the UN Office in Geneva and the UN Archives and Records Management Section (ARMS), which has been preserving the Organization’s memories since the very beginning in 1945:

“When the world commemorated the 70th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention, ARMS was presented with a mystery.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) noticed that a photograph caption from the 1951 Convention identified three men who were present, but failed to name the only woman seated at the table.

In a quest to find an answer, archives teams from UNHCR, the UN Office in Geneva and ARMS joined forces to identify this woman.

The first clue came from Knud Larsen, President of the Conference, seated in the middle of the photograph. In his convention speech, he thanked a “Miss Kitchen”, Deputy Executive Secretary – located on his right – for keeping the conference on track. Additional research disclosed that her first name was Margaret.

We then discovered that shortly after the 1951 Convention, she married and changed her name to Margaret Bruce.