ICTworks

The digital transformation of humanitarian response has been hailed as a sign of improvement and modernization that was long overdue in a sector often accused of being conservative and inefficient. However, two converging processes are unfolding:

• The transformation of some humanitarian actors into tech services providers,
• The transformation of tech companies into de facto humanitarian service providers.

This phenomenon is happening without these entities taking up the responsibilities and duties that regulate their expanded area of intervention, resulting in serious gaps in accountability. The collaboration between humanitarian organizations and companies is also bringing emerging and untested technologies to volatile contexts without any transparency, due process, protection protocols, or recourse mechanisms.

The humanitarian sector increasingly relies on digital tools and remote contact with those they assist, in part because of shrinking access to conflict-affected communities. Ultimately, the failure of states and conflict actors to uphold international law creates gaps these sectors attempt to fill, through whatever tools available.

Mapping Humanitarian Technology

However, as Access Now uncovers in Mapping of Humanitarian Technology, humanitarian tech partnerships seem to dodge normative and regulatory data protection frameworks, whether by claiming the extra-legality and extraterritoriality of the technology or the implementation, or taking advantage of the secretive nature of their agreements, and sometimes of their immunities.

Humanitarianism benefits from the constant improvement of the tools offered to improve life and dignity of people experiencing vulnerability. But this cannot and should not come at the cost of treating the most vulnerable as test subjects for often-exploitive new tools, creating long tails of data with uncertain impacts.

Through the lens of human rights we have learned the hard way the harms caused by a digital transformation based mostly on narrow market incentives, with little oversight. Instead, we propose greater investment in rigorous safeguards and responsible digital transformation, allowing humanitarians to better serve people at risk while also spreading sunlight on this opaque network of business relationships, emerging technologies, and data dynamics.

6 Recommendations for Humanitarians

1. Adhere to UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in partnership-building with profit and nonprofit tech actors, including through contractual provisions and in cooperation with redress and grievance mechanisms.
2. For UN entities, build on existing good practices and integrating emerging guidance on human rights due diligence and digital technology such as the UN Human Rights-led system wide guidance on human rights due diligence and impact assessments in the use of new technologies, and to heed the call of the UN Secretary General to engage “with civil society, external experts and those most vulnerable and affected.”
3. Set up and manage a common data accountability system connecting all DPOs and ideally an external independent mechanism to allow individual recourse and actionability of their digital rights across all relevant data controllers at once, as has been requested since at least the RedRose hack in 2017.
4. Reevaluate any use of deployment of technology identified as enabling surveillance or a surveillance-adjacent system, as described in this report.
5. Set up and manage a public tracking system to efficiently and transparently disclose data incidents and institutional responses.
6. Immediately track, monitor, and disclose their humanitarian data ecosystem and footprint, inclusive of their official tech stack and due diligence documentation, including all related assessments.

A lightly edited synopsis of Mapping of Humanitarian Technology