GENEVA -- The United Nations refugee agency on Tuesday unveiled a new partnership with Internet giant Google to help track refugees from Iraq to Darfur and raise public awareness of its work.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) launched its new service using the "Google Earth Outreach" program, which allows organizations to add their own data and information as a "layer" on top of the existing Google Earth service.

The UNHCR layer shows three of the agency's main refugee operations -- Iraq, Darfur and Colombia -- as well as providing an overview of its structure, mandate and wider operations.

Users can click on an icon of a camp for Darfur refugees in Chad, for example, and read pop-up windows detailing everyday life for the refugees, their histories and the challenges aid agencies face in ensuring their health and livelihoods.

"Google Earth is a very powerful way for UNHCR to show the vital work that it is doing in some of the world's most remote and difficult displacement situations," said UNHCR Deputy High Commissioner Craig Johnstone.

"By showing our work in its geographical context, we can really highlight the issues we face and how we tackle them," he added.

Johnstone stressed that the agency had to change how it works to keep pace with technological developments as well as the increasing complexity of refugee issues, with economic migration and displacement due to climate change adding to traditional patterns of refugees forced from their homes by conflict.

"We're putting more people out in the field, trying to be as slim as we possibly can at the headquarters level, really working extremely hard to stay abreast of change," he told a presentation of the new Google service at the agency's base here.

"The opportunity to work with Google to sort of help us in that process I think is a fantastic opportunity for the UNHCR," he added.

Rebecca Moore, head of the Google Earth Outreach program, said the aim was to address what to many people is an abstract construct, and "take" them there on a virtual trip, so they can gain an intuitive understanding of what is at stake.