Humanitarian coordination is often viewed as a technical process—aligning actors, resources, and information to achieve common objectives. However, within UNHCR, coordination serves a function that extends beyond management. Viewed through an organisational lens, it also shows underlying anxieties about institutional identity and legitimacy. The way UNHCR exercises—or avoids—leadership can reflect not only operational choices but also efforts to assert relevance and control within what Barnett aptly terms the “humanitarian marketplace” (Barnett 2003, 411).