TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Advancing Accountability
Throughout our lines of work, we aim to bring our research and that of our partners and peers to the attention of governments, international organizations, and human rights accountability mechanisms. Our starting point is that a better understanding of the human rights implications of digital government should inform the policies and decision-making of governments and international organizations.
- We seek out varied avenues and fora at different scales of governance, to bring human rights concerns surrounding digitalization into specific policy and decision-making spheres.
- We center a comparative, international perspective grounded in human rights, focusing especially on the rights of the most marginalized.
- We seek especially to highlight important parallels between the human rights implications of digital government across varied contexts all around the world.
- We translate human rights concerns into recommendations for technical bodies, including technical standard-setting bodies, to make equity and rights considerations legible to the communities who are designing digital technologies.
Our work on the digital state and human rights originated in pioneering work undertaken during Philip Alston‘s mandate as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. Since then, we have engaged UN human rights accountability mechanisms, several other international organizations, national government bodies, and national courts, to bring comparative evidence and expertise on digitalization and human rights to bear in many different policy fora.
- Nothing is Inevitable! Main Takeaways from Event on “Techno-Racism and Human Rights: A Conversation with the UN Special Rapporteur on Racism”
- Techno-Racism and Human Rights: A Conversation with the UN Special Rapporteur on Racism
- Ireland’s Public Services Card discriminates against the marginalised, warns UN rights expert
- United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights discusses how human rights can make a difference in the digital age
- Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights on the digital welfare state
- Submissions to global consultation on digital welfare and human rights
- Contesting the Foundations of Digital Public Infrastructure
- Open letter: World Bank and its donors must protect human rights in digital ID systems
- Report on the role of the World Bank in promoting a specific model of digital ID system
- Examining the World Bank’s Approach to Digital ID
- Are we harnessing the power of machine learning in social protection?
- CSOs Call for a Full Integration of Human Rights in the Deployment of Digital Identification Systems
- Prominent human rights expert admitted as amicus curiae in groundbreaking legal challenge to Ugandan national digital ID system
- Amicus brief by Professor Philip Alston to the Ugandan High Court in digital ID litigation
- Press release: rights organization submit legal opinion on Serbia’s law to automate and digitalize social protection
- Legal opinion submitted to Serbian Constitutional Court
- Amicus brief to the District Court of the Hague in the SyRI litigation
- Profiling the Poor in the Dutch Welfare State
- Landmark judgment from the Netherlands on digital welfare states and human rights
- “Shaping Digital Identity Standards: An explainer and recommendations on technical standard-setting for digital identity systems”
- Submission to the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology in response to request for comments on the draft Digital Identity Guidelines
- Submission to the United States White House Office of Science & Technology Policy on AI-enabled biometric technologies
- Press release: U.S. government must adopt moratorium on mandatory use of biometric technologies in critical sectors, look to evidence abroad, urge human rights experts
- United States has opportunity to learn from years of biometric failures and to regulate use of biometrics in government services
