Forming a High Level Expert Group to Strengthen Global Gender Justice

INEQUALITIES

Forming a High Level Expert Group to Strengthen Global Gender Justice

In a groundbreaking initiative to address gender-based injustices, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law together with the American Society of International Law, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s Women, Law, and Leadership Project and the University of Oxford’s Bonavero Institute for Human Rights formed the High-Level Expert Group on Gender Persecution and Gender Apartheid. 

The High-Level Expert Group is led by Baroness Helena Kennedy of The Shaws KC, a Member of the House of Lords and founder of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights; Catherine Amirfar, Partner and Co-Chair of the International Disputes Resolution Group and Public International Law Group at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP; Rangita de Silva de Alwis, a Senior Fellow at Penn Carey Law and Member of CEDAW; and Ghizal Haress, a former Ombudsperson for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and visiting professor at the University of Toronto. 

The group is comprised of an esteemed array of global experts and human rights defenders who bring to bear a wealth of knowledge and expertise, including José E. Alvarez, NYU School of Law Herbert and Rose Rubin Professor of International Law.

The High-Level Expert Group seeks to address gaps in the existing international legal framework addressing gender-based crimes, including by examining the basis for gender apartheid and gender persecution under international law, developing the definitions and framework for addressing these crimes, advancing accountability efforts against perpetrators of gender-based crimes, and centering the voices of victims and those directly affected by gender apartheid and gender persecution.

Through this newly-launched initiative, NYU Law students have the opportunity through research to be part of the ongoing efforts to achieve justice for victims of gender-based apartheid and/or persecution around the world. A myriad of legal research assignments on topics ranging from gender-based crimes under international law to human rights protections against gender-based discrimination will be carried under the direct supervision of pro-bono attorneys at a local NY firm supervised by Prof. Alvarez. 

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August 28, 2024 Youssef Farhat Student Program  

Seizing the opportunity to improve Uganda’s national digital ID system

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Seizing the opportunity to improve Uganda’s national digital ID system

In 2014, Uganda introduced its first national digital ID system. Now, a decade later, as millions of ID cards are set to expire, the Government is planning a significant upgrade of the system and will soon begin a mass enrollment exercise to register all unregistered Ugandans. Given that many exclusions and harms have arisen from the current digital ID system, the Government’s plans to roll out a new system represent a key opportunity to learn from past experiences and ensure that the new system is more inclusive, equitable, and privacy-protecting.

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In this document, we raise 5 urgent recommendations that the Government must adopt to put Uganda on the path towards a digital ID system that centers inclusion, equity, privacy, transparency, and accountability. Drawing on research and lessons learned from Uganda’s existing national digital ID system, as well as incorporating lessons from other countries’ experiences and from international best practices, we recommend that the Government should:

  • Improve communication and transparency about plans for the new digital ID;
  • Proactively facilitate participation, particularly of vulnerable communities and of civil society organizations, in policy and design choices;
  • Conduct a comprehensive Human Rights Impact Assessment to identify risks arising from the ID system and the registration process;
  • Take steps to ensure that marginalized and vulnerable groups are proactively included in enrollment and renewal processes;
  • Put in place concrete plans for a transition period to ensure that no rights are violated as the Government works to introduce new digital components

This is not intended to be an exhaustive list but instead focuses on short-term, actionable recommendations that will help concretely improve the Government’s approach in the immediate term and avoid further entrenching the well-documented problems and weaknesses that have affected the current system.

July 25, 2024. 

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July 24, 2024 Youssef Farhat Product  

New Casebook—International Human Rights by P. Alston available in an Open Access Publication

HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

New Casebook—International Human Rights by P. Alston available in an Open Access Publication

Philip Alston’s International Human Rights textbook is now available free of charge in a comprehensively revised edition and on an Open Access basis starting July 8, 2024.

Digital Access

This book examines the world of contemporary human rights, including legal norms, political contexts and moral ideals. It acknowledges the regime’s strengths and weaknesses, and focuses on today’s principal challenges. These include the struggles against resurgent racism and anti-gender ideology, the implications of new technologies for fact-finding and many other parts of the regime, the continuing marginality of economic, social and cultural rights, radical inequality, climate change, and the evermore central role of the private sector.

The boundaries of the subject have steadily expanded as the post-World War II regime has become an indelible part of the legal, political and moral landscape. Given the breadth and complexity of the regime, the book takes an interdisciplinary and critical approach.

… imaginative and stimulating materials with thought-provoking commentary… a wonderful teaching tool, as well as a valuable starting point for research.

Judge Hilary Charlesworth, Judge of the International Court of Justice.

Features include:

  • A focus on current issues such as new technologies, climate change, counter-terrorism, reparations, sanctions, and universal jurisdiction;
  • Expanded focus on race, gender, sexual orientation, disability and other forms of discrimination and the backlash against efforts to combat them;
  • Introductory chapters that provide the necessary overview of international law;
  • An interdisciplinary approach that puts human rights issues into their broader political, economic, and cultural contexts;
  • Diverse and critical perspectives dealt with throughout;
  • Sections dealing with political economy of human rights and the challenge of growing inequality;
  • Issues of international humanitarian law are widely reflected; and
  • Focus on current situations in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, Venezuela, and others

Major themes that run through the book include the colonial and imperial objectives often pursued in the name of human rights, evolving notions of autonomy and sovereignty, the changing configuration of the public-private divide in human rights ordering, the escalating tensions between international human rights and national security, and the striking evolution of ideas about the nature and purposes of the regime itself.

This book is a successor to previous volumes entitled International Human Rights in Context (1996, 2000 and 2008, all co-authored with Henry Steiner and in 2008 also with Ryan Goodman) and International Human Rights: Text and Materials (2013, co-authored with Ryan Goodman). “All four volumes were published by Oxford University Press, and I am grateful to them for reverting all rights to the author in order to enable this Open Access publication” says Alston. 

The 2024 comprehensively revised edition will be available free of charge and can be downloaded in either a single pdf file for the entire book or separate files for each of the eighteen chapters.

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June 26, 2024 Youssef Farhat Product  

The Time is Now: Mexico Must Grant Haitians Refugee Protections under the Cartagena Declaration

HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

The Time is Now: Mexico Must Grant Haitians Refugee Protections under the Cartagena

This report published by Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Matías de Córdova A.C. and the Global Justice Clinic shows why Mexico–and, by extension, all countries that have signed the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees–must grant Haitians refugee status. 

English
Kreyòl
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Haitians living outside of Haiti often lack access to basic human rights, face anti-Black discrimination, and in many countries, live under the threat of being sent back to Haiti. Pathways to legal status in other countries are essential for Haitians seeking safety, but governments rarely grant legal status to Haitians and, when they do, protections are often temporary.

Mexico is one of the many countries that Haitian people have migrated to in the past decade. Tens of thousands of Haitians enter Mexico every year. Mexico has incorporated the Cartagena Declaration–which provides a broader definition of “refugee” than the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1966 Protocol–into its domestic law, legally binding it to grant refugee status to people who, based on an objective analysis of the circumstances in their country of origin, meet the elements of the declaration. This report establishes how three of the Declaration’s elements–generalized violence, massive violations of human rights, and other circumstances that seriously disturb public order–are pervasive in Haiti.

Advocacy

  • The Global Justice Clinic and Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Matías de Córdova A.C. launched the report in Mexico City in late April 2024, and met with representatives of Mexican government agencies, including the Comisión Mexicana de Ayuda a Refugiados (Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance) and the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (Secretariat of Foreign Affairs) to urge them to apply the Cartagena Declaration to Haitian nationals.
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May 23, 2024 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized  

Mexico Must Extend Cartagena’s Protection Principles to Haitian Asylum Seekers

HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Mexico Must Extend Cartagena’s Protection Principles to Haitian Asylum Seekers

Intersecting crises in Haiti have left tens of thousands of Haitians no choice but to flee their country, and Haitians who fled in prior years are unable to return home. A report by Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Matías de Córdova A.C. and the Global Justice Clinic shows why Mexico–and, by extension, all countries that have signed the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees–must grant Haitians refugee status. 

Cover art graphics

The report comes at a critical moment. Haiti currently faces extraordinary violence and a near-complete collapse of state institutions. Armed groups killed more than 1,500 people in the first three months of 2024, displaced more than 360,000 people within Haiti’s borders, and seized control of the capital, ports, and hospitals. Sexual violence is endemic. Escalated violence and targeted attacks on government infrastructure in March 2024 plunged Haiti into a two-months long state of emergency. 

Mexico is one of the many countries that Haitian people have migrated to in the past decade. Tens of thousands of Haitians enter Mexico every year. Mexico has incorporated the Cartagena Declaration–which provides a broader definition of “refugee” than the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1966 Protocol–into its domestic law, legally binding it to grant refugee status to people who, based on an objective analysis of the circumstances in their country of origin, meet the elements of the declaration. This report establishes how three of the Declaration’s elements–generalized violence, massive violations of human rights, and other circumstances that seriously disturb public order–are pervasive in Haiti.

Between 2021 and 2023, Mexico approved approximately 5,200 out of more than 110,000 Haitians’ refugee applications — representing a 4.6% approval rate. In those years Haitians were also the nationality that filed the most refugee applications in Mexico.

This disproportionately low approval rate of Haitian applicants, who by any measure face persecution and extremely challenging conditions at home, flies in the face of Mexico’s legal obligations to establish nondiscriminatory migratory procedures.

Enrique Vidal, Interim Director of CDH Fray Matías.

Haitians living outside of Haiti often lack access to basic human rights, face anti-Black discrimination, and in many countries, live under the threat of being sent back to Haiti. Pathways to legal status in other countries are essential for Haitians seeking safety, but governments rarely grant legal status to Haitians and, when they do, protections are often temporary.

Recognizing Haitian nationals as refugees under the Cartagena Declaration is one necessary step to correct the systemic denial of Haitians’ rights. In doing so, Mexico could pave the way for greater protection of human rights in the hemisphere. 

Mexico has the opportunity to be a leader in protecting the rights of Haitian people in the region. Governments throughout the region must assess country conditions objectively, and cease to discriminate against the Haitian people. 

Gabrielle Apollon, Director of the Haitian Immigrant Rights Project at the Global Justice Clinic, in light of the upcoming 40th anniversary of the signing of the Cartagena Declaration. 

GJC and CDH Fray Matías launched the report, in Spanish, in Mexico City in late April 2024. They met with representatives of Mexican government agencies, including the Comisión Mexicana de Ayuda a Refugiados (Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance) and the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (Secretariat of Foreign Affairs) to urge them to apply the Cartagena Declaration to Haitian nationals. GJC and Fray Matías staff also observed firsthand the inhumane living conditions that many Haitian migrants and asylum-seekers endure in migrant encampments in Mexico. These conditions underscore the urgency of providing greater refugee protections for Haitians.

Today, GJC and CDH Fray Matías make this report available in English. Although the Mexican government remains the primary advocacy target, this report presents the case for all signatories to the Cartagena Declaration to extend refugee protection to Haitian nationals, and for countries throughout the Hemisphere to provide maximum protections to Haitian migrants and asylum-seekers.

May 24, 2024. For more information, please contact Gabrielle Apollon (English and Kreyòl) or Ellie Happel (English, Kreyòl, Spanish).

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May 23, 2024 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized  

Poor Enough for the Algorithm? Exploring Jordan’s Poverty Targeting System

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Poor Enough for the Algorithm? Exploring Jordan’s Poverty Targeting System

The Jordanian government is using an algorithm to rank social protection applicants from least poor to poorest, as part of a poverty alleviation program. While helpful to those individuals who receive aid, the system is excluding beneficiaries in need, as it is failing to accurately reflect the complex realities of poverty. It uses an outdated poverty measure, weights imperfect indicators—such as utility consumption—and relies on a static view of socioeconomic status.

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On November 28, 2023, the Digital Welfare State and Human Rights project hosted the sixteenth episode in the Transformer States conversation series on Digital Government and Human Rights. Victoria Adelmant and Katelyn Cioffi interviewed Hiba Zayadin, a senior researcher in the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), about a report published by HRW on the Jordanian government’s use of an algorithmic system to rank applicants for a welfare program based on their poverty level, using data like electricity usage and car ownership. This blog highlights key issues related to the system’s inability to reflect the complexities of poverty and its algorithmic exclusion of individuals in need.

The context behind Jordan’s poverty targeting program 

‘Poverty targeting’ is generally understood to mean directing social program benefits towards those most in need, with the aim of efficiently using limited government resources and improving living conditions for the poorest individuals. This approach entails the collection of wide-ranging information about socioeconomic circumstances, often through in-depth surveys and interviews, to enable means testing or proxy means testing. Some governments have adopted an approach in which beneficiaries are ‘ranked’ from richest to poorest, and target aid only to those falling below a certain threshold. The World Bank has long advocated for poverty targeting in social assistance. For example, since 2003, the World Bank has supported Brazil’s Bolsa Família program, which is a program targeted at the poorest 40% of the population. 

Increasingly, the World Bank has turned to new technologies to seek to improve the accuracy of poverty targeting programs. It has provided funding to many countries for data-driven, algorithm-enabled solutions to enhance targeting. Similar programs have been implemented in countries including Jordan, Mauritania, Palestine, Morocco, Iraq, Tunis, Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon.

Launched in 2019 with World Bank support, Jordan’s Takaful program, an automated cash transfer program, provides monthly support to families (roughly US $56 to $192) to mitigate poverty. Managed by the National Aid Fund, the program targets the more than 24% of Jordan’s population that falls under the poverty line. The Takaful program has been especially welcome in Jordan, in light of rising living costs. However, policy choices underpinning this program have excluded many individuals who are in need: eligibility restrictions limit access solely to Jordanian nationals, such that the program does not cover registered Syrian refugees, Palestinians without Jordanian passports, migrant workers, and the non-Jordanian families of Jordanian women—since Jordanian women cannot pass on citizenship to their children. Initial phases of the program entailed broader eligibility, but criteria were tightened in subsequent iterations.

Mismatch between the Takaful program’s indicators and the reality of people’s lives

In addition, further exclusions have arisen because of the operation of the algorithmic system used in the program. When a person applies to Takaful, the system first determines eligibility by checking whether an applicant is a citizen and whether they are under the poverty line. It subsequently employs an algorithm, relying on 57 socioeconomic indicators, to rank people from least poor to poorest. The National Aid Fund uses existing databases as well as applicants’ answers to a questionnaire – that they must fill out online. Indicators include household size, geographic location, utilities consumption, ownership of businesses, and car ownership. It is unclear how these indicators are weighted, but the National Aid Fund has admitted that some indicators will lead to the automatic exclusion of applicants from the Takaful program. Applicants who own a car that is less than five years old or a business valued at over 3000 Jordanian Dinars, for instance, are automatically excluded. 

In its recent report, HRW highlights a number of shortcomings of the algorithmic system deployed in the Takaful program, critiquing its inability to reflect the complex and dynamic nature of poverty. The system, HRW argues, uses an outdated poverty measure, and embeds many problematic assumptions. For example, the algorithm gives some weight to whether an applicant owns a car. However, there are cars in people’s names that they do not actually own; some people own cars that broke down long ago, but they cannot afford to repair them. Additionally, the algorithm assumes that higher electricity and water consumption indicates that a family is less vulnerable. However, poorer households in Jordan in many cases actually have higher consumption—a 2020 survey showed that almost 75% of low- to middle-income households lived in apartments with poor thermal insulation.

Furthermore, this algorithmic system is designed on the basis of a single assessment of socioeconomic circumstances at a fixed point in time. But poverty is not static; people’s lives change and their level of need fluctuates. Another challenge is the unpredictability of aid: in this conversation with CHRGJ’s Digital Welfare State and Human Rights team, Hiba shared the story of a new mother who had been suddenly and unexpectedly cut off from the Takaful program, precisely when she was most in need.

At a broader level, introducing an algorithmic system such as this can also exacerbate information asymmetries. HRW’s report highlights issues concerning opacity in algorithmic decision-making—both for government officials themselves and those subject to the algorithm’s decisions—such that it is more difficult to understand how decisions are being made within this system.

Recommendations to improve the Takaful program

Given these wide-ranging implications, HRW’s primary recommendation is to move away from poverty targeting algorithms and toward universal social protection, which could cost under 1% of the country’s GDP. This could be funded through existing resources, tackling tax avoidance, implementing progressive taxes, and leveraging the influence of the World Bank to guide governments towards sustainable solutions. 

When asked during this conversation whether the algorithm used in the Takaful program could be improved, Hiba noted that a technically perfect algorithm executing a flawed policy will still lead to negative outcomes. She argued that it is the policy itself – the attempt to rank people from least poor to poorest – that is prone to exclusion errors, and warns that technology may be shiny, promising to make targeting accurate, effective, and efficient, but that it can also be a distraction from the policy issues at hand.

Thus, instead of flattening economic realities and leading to the exclusion of people who are, in reality, in immense need, Hiba recommended that support be provided inclusively and universally—to everyone during vulnerable stages of life, regardless of their income and their wealth. Therefore, rather than focusing on using technology that will enable ever-more precise targeting, Jordan should focus on embracing solutions that allow for more universal social protection.

Additional resources

Rebecca Kahn, JD program, NYU School of Law;  and  Human Rights Scholar at the Digital Welfare State & Human Rights project. Her research interests relate to responsible AI governance, digital rights, and consumer protection. She previously worked in the U.S. House and Senate as a legislative staffer.

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February 19, 2024 Youssef Farhat Event Summary  

Co-creating a Shared Human Rights Agenda for AI Regulation and the Digital Welfare State

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Co-creating a Shared Human Rights Agenda for AI Regulation and the Digital Welfare State

On September 26, 2023, the Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU Law and Amnesty Tech’s Algorithmic Accountability Lab (AAL) brought together 50 participants from civil society organizations across the globe to discuss the use and regulation of artificial intelligence in the public sector, within a collaborative online strategy session entitled ‘Co-Creating a Shared Human Rights Agenda for AI and the Digital Welfare State.’ Participants spanned diverse geographies and contexts—from Nigeria to Chile, and from Pakistan to Brazil—and included organizations working across a broad spectrum of human rights issues such as privacy, social security, education, and health. Through a series of lightning talks and breakout room discussions, the session surfaced shared concerns regarding the use of AI in public sector contexts, key gaps in existing discussions surrounding AI regulation, and potential joint advocacy opportunities.

Global discussions on the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) have, in many contexts, thus far been preoccupied with whether to place meaningful constraints on the development, sale, and use of AI by private technology companies. Less attention has been paid to the need to place similar constraints on governments’ use of AI. But governments’ enthusiastic adoption of AI across public sector programs and critical public services has been accelerating apace around the world. AI-based systems are consistently tested in spheres where some of the most marginalized and low-income groups are unable to opt out – for instance, machine learning and other technologies are used to detect welfare benefit fraud, to assess vulnerability and determine eligibility for social benefits like housing, and to monitor people on the move. All too often, however, this technological experimentation results in discrimination, restriction of access to key services, privacy violations, and many other human rights harms. As governments eagerly build “digital welfare states,” incorporating AI into critical public services, the scale and severity of potential implications demands that meaningful constraints be placed on these developments. 

In the past few years, a wide array of regulatory and policy initiatives aimed at regulating the development and use of AI have been introduced – in Brazil, China, Canada, the EU, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, among many other countries and policy fora. However, what is emerging from these initiatives is an uneven patchwork of approaches to AI regulation, with concerning gaps and omissions when it comes to public sector applications of AI. Some of the world’s largest economies – where many powerful technology companies are based – are embarking on new regulatory initiatives with impacts far beyond their territorial confines, while many of the groups likely to be most affected have not been given sufficient opportunities to participate in these processes.

Despite these shortcomings, ongoing efforts to craft regulatory regimes do offer a crucial and urgent entry point for civil society organizations to seek to highlight critical gaps, to foster greater participation, and to contribute to shaping future deployments of AI in these important sectors.

In hosting this collaborative event on AI regulation and the digital welfare state, the AAL and the Center sought to build an inclusive space for civil society groups from across regions and sectors to forge new connections, share lessons, and collectively strategize. We sought to expand mobilization and build solidarity by convening individuals from dozens of countries, who work across a wide range of fields – including “digital rights” organizations, but also bringing in human rights and social justice groups who have not previously worked on issues relating to new technologies. Our aim was to brainstorm how actors across the human rights ecosystem can, in practice, help to elevate more voices into ongoing discussions about AI regulation.

Key issues for AI regulation in the digital welfare state

In breakout sessions, participants emphasized the urgent need to address serious harms that are already resulting from governments’ AI uses, particularly in contexts such as border control, policing, the judicial system, healthcare, and social protection. The public narrative – and accelerated impetus for regulation – has been dominated by discussion of existential threats AI may pose in the future, rather than the severe and widespread threats that are already seen in almost every area of public services. In Serbia, the roll-out of Social Cards in the welfare system has excluded thousands of the most marginalized from accessing their social protection entitlements; in Brazil, the deployment of facial recognition in public schools has subjected young children to discriminatory biases and serious privacy risks. Deployments of AI across public services are consistently entrenching inequalities and exacerbating intersecting discrimination – and participants noted that governments’ increasing interest in generative AI, which has the potential to encode harmful racial bias and stereotypes, will likely only intensify these risks.

Participants also noted that it is likely that AI will continue to impact groups that may defy traditional categorizations – including, for instance, those who speak minority languages. Indeed, a key theme across discussions was the insufficient attention paid in regulatory debates to AI’s impacts on culture and language. Given that systems are generally trained only in dominant languages, breakout discussions surfaced concerns about the potential erasure of traditional languages and loss of cultural nuance.

As advocates work not only to remedy some of these existing harms, but also to anticipate the impacts of the next iterations of AI, many expressed concern about the dominant role that the private sector plays in governments’ roll-outs of AI systems, as well as in discussions surrounding regulation. Where tech companies – who are often protected by powerful lobby groups, commercial confidentiality, and intellectual property regimes – are selling combinations of software, hardware, and technical guidance to governments, this can pose significant transparency challenges. It can be difficult for civil society organizations and affected individuals to understand who is providing these systems, as well as to understand how decisions are made. In the welfare context, for example, beneficiaries are often unaware of whether and how AI systems are making highly consequential decisions about their entitlements. Participants noted that human rights actors need the capacity and resources to move beyond traditional human rights work, to engage with processes such as procurement, standard-setting, and auditing, and to address issues related to intellectual property regimes and proliferating public-private partnerships underlying governments’ uses of AI.

These issues are compounded by the fact that, in many instances, AI-based systems are designed and built in countries such as the US and then marketed and sold to governments around the world for use across critical public services. Often, these systems are not designed with sensitivity to local contexts, cultures, and languages, nor with cognizance of how the technology will interface with the political, social, and economic landscape where it is deployed. In addition, civil society organizations face additional barriers when seeking transparency and access to information from foreign companies. As AI regulation efforts advance, a failure to consider potential extraterritorial harms will leave a significant accountability gap and risk deepening global inequalities. Many participants therefore noted both the importance of ensuring that regulation in countries where tech companies are based includes diverse voices and addresses extraterritorial impacts, but also to ensure that Global North models of regulation, which may not be fit for purpose, are not automatically “exported.”

A way forward

The event ended with a strategizing session that revealed the diverse strengths of the human rights movement and multiple areas for future work. Several specific and urgent calls to action emerged from these discussions.

First, given the disproportionate impacts of governments’ AI deployments on marginalized communities, a key theme was the need for broader participation in discussions on emerging AI regulation. This includes specially protected groups such as indigenous peoples, minoritized ethnic and racial groups, immigrant communities, people with disabilities, women’s rights activists, children, and LGBTQ+ groups, to name just a few. Without learning from and elevating the perspectives and experiences of these groups, regulatory initiatives will fail to address the full scope of the realities of AI. We must therefore develop participatory methodologies that bring the voices of communities into key policy spaces. More routes to meaningful consultation would lead to greater power and autonomy for previously marginalized voices to shape a more human rights-centric agenda for AI regulation. 

Second, the unique impacts that public sector use of AI can have on human rights, especially for marginalized groups, demands a comprehensive approach to AI regulation that takes careful account of specific sectors. Regulatory regimes that fail to include meaningful sector-specific safeguards for areas such as health, education, and social security will fail to address the full range of AI related harms. Participants noted that existing tools and mechanisms can provide a starting point – such as consultation and testing requirements, specific prohibitions on certain kinds of systems, requirements surrounding proportionality, mandatory human rights impact assessments, transparency requirements, periodic evaluations, and supervision mechanisms.

Finally, there was a shared desire to build stronger solidarity across a wider range of actors, and a call to action for more effective collaborations. Participants from around the world were keen to share resources, partner on specific advocacy goals, and exchange lessons learned. Since participants focus on many diverse issues, and adopt different approaches to achieve better human rights outcomes, collaboration will allow us to draw on a much deeper pool of collective knowledge, methodologies, and networks. It will be especially critical to bridge silos between those who identify more as “digital rights” organizations and groups working on issues such as healthcare, or migrants’ rights, or on the rights of people with disabilities. Elevating the work of grassroots groups, and improving diversity and representation among those empowered to enter spaces where key decisions around AI regulation are made, should also be central in movement-building. 

There is also an urgent need for more exchange not only across the human rights ecosystem, but also with actors from other disciplines who bring different forms of technical expertise, such as engineers and public interest technologists. Given the barriers to entry to regulatory spaces – including the resources, long-term commitment, and technical vocabularies imposed – effective coalition-building and information sharing could help to lessen these burdens.

While this event brought together a fantastic and energetic group of advocates from dozens of countries, these takeaways reflect the views of only a small subset of the relevant stakeholders in these debates. We ended the session hopeful, but with the recognition that there is a great deal more work needed to allow for the full participation of affected communities from around the world. Moving forward, we aim to continue to create spaces for varied groups to self-organize, continue the dialogue, and share information. We will help foster collaborations and concretely support organizations in building new partnerships across sectors and geographies, and hope to continue to co-create a shared human rights agenda for AI regulation for the digital welfare state.

As we continue this work and seek to support efforts and build collaborations, we would love to hear from you – please get in touch if you are interested in joining these efforts.

November 14, 2023. Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project at NYU Law Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, and Amnesty Tech’s Algorithmic Accountability Lab. 
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November 14, 2023 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized  

What I Should Have Said to Fernando Botero

HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

What I Should Have Said to Fernando Botero

Your art is a provocation to viewers to ask: what is our role in safeguarding human rights? A reflection on meeting Colombian artist Fernando Botero. 

Image from Slideshow: The Botero Exhibit at Berkeley Law

I was privileged to have met world-famous Colombian artist, Fernando Botero, who died last month [September 2023] at age 91, when he visited the University of California, Berkeley in 2007. I teach human rights at the law school, and the artists came to campus for the exhibit of his 2005 Abu Ghraib series. The canvasses and sketches depict the horrors of Iraqi prisoner abuse by US soldiers, based on leaked photographs taken by service members at the Abu Ghraib prison facility. 

Overwhelmed by the paintings and awe-stuck by the artist who created them, I fumbled my few seconds with Mr. Botero. My memory is that I offered an anodyne appreciation of his work. If I could speak with him now, here is what I would say:

Mr. Botero, every day I enter the law school I try to keep in mind that the job of law professors is to train the next generation of lawyers to embody the highest values of the profession. It is true that we teach law students how to analyze the law, how to evaluate the strength of arguments, and how to weigh the equities in any given case. But law is not a set of rules that lawyers discover or inherit. Law is made through human intervention, in the form of legislation, interpretation by lawyers, as well as judicial decisions. You made vivid the power that legal professionals have to strengthen or to destroy the rule of law fabric that sustains humanity.

Your art is a provocation to viewers to ask: what is our role in safeguarding human rights?

Government lawyers drafted the rules of interrogating prisoners captured in the so-called War on Terror, setting the background norms for the torture of prisoners perpetrated  by guards and recorded on film as trophy shots. And lawyers created the rules for the treatment of so-called enemy combatants the United States held at Guantanamo Bay. I interviewed dozens of former detainees, men never charged with a crime, who endured years of mistreatment proscribed by US government lawyers in violation of international law. Government lawyers and politicians led the public to believe that harsh treatment, even torture, of suspected terrorists was necessary to keep us safe. Your art asks us to confront this bargain and to reconsider what we become as a nation, if we accept that premise, and you offer us a way forward.

You said at the time of the exhibit that your outrage that the United State, which has stood for democracy and rule of law, would commit such abuse motivated you to paint the series. Your Abu Ghraib collection conveys the suffering of Iraqi prisoners. Yet through your iconic style of voluminous forms, you also render the victims literally larger than life and give their bodies a weight that suggests a hyper-permanence. Their humanity outlives the outrages inflicted on them by US soldiers. Humanity will endure in spite of depredations, but whether ruptures in rule of law are mended by justice is up to us. And I think this is what you meant when you said about these works that: “Art is a permanent accusation.” 

Thanks to your permanent gift of the series to the university, I can view a few of the canvasses on display at our law school. Viewers must investigate the causes of US descent to systematic torture and the path to correct the injustice. The paintings accuse the audience of the dangers of believing that we must trade human rights for security; that it is acceptable to strip individuals of dignity simply by their being called a terrorist by a powerful state. The paintings accuse lawyers of their role in justifying rules that strip individuals of fundamental due process protections against arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, and torture.

Today, we find ourselves in the midst of another shocking rollback of fundamental rights and inversion of the rule of law, this time closer to home. The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade ushers in an era in which forced pregnancy, a form of torture under international law, is legal in the United States. There is a dangerous throughline from Abu Ghraib to the Dobbs decision: when we dehumanize one category of persons and legalize control over their bodies through direct or indirect violence, we make it easier to apply the same logic to an ever-expanding menu of targets. 

It is more than two decades after 9/11 and we as a society have not yet answered your accusation, Mr. Botero, to our detriment. Yet progressive lawyers and students continue to name torture and fight injustice when it is unpopular to do so. Justice remains a work in progress, which is why we need compelling art, like yours, to continue to challenge us to action.

October 4, 2023. Laurel E. Fletcher, Visiting Scholar (Fall 2023).
Laurel E. Fletcher is Chancellor’s Clinical Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, School of Law where she co-directs the International Human Rights Law Clinic and the Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law.

This post reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of NYU, NYU Law or the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. 

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October 4, 2023 Youssef Farhat Product  

Contesting the Foundations of Digital Public Infrastructure

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Contesting the Foundations of Digital Public Infrastructure

What Digital ID Litigation Can Tell Us About the Future of Digital Government and Society

Many governments and international organizations have embraced the transformative potential of ‘digital public infrastructure’—a concept that refers to large-scale digital platforms run by or supported by governments, such as digital ID, digital payments, or data exchange platforms. However, many of these platforms remain heavily contested, and recent legal challenges in several countries have vividly demonstrated some of the risks and limitations of existing approaches.

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In this short explainer, we discuss four case studies from Uganda, Mexico, Kenya, and Serbia, in which civil society organizations have brought legal challenges to contest initiatives to build digital public infrastructure. What connects the experiences in these countries is that efforts to introduce new national-scale digital platforms have had harmful impacts on the human rights of marginalized groups—impacts that, the litigants argue, were disregarded as governments rolled out these digital infrastructures, and which are wholly disproportionate to the purported benefits that these digital systems are supposed to bring.

These four examples therefore hold important lessons for policymakers, highlighting the urgent need for effective safeguards, mitigations, and remedies as the development and implementation of digital public infrastructure continues to accelerate.

The explainer document builds upon discussions we had during an event we hosted, entitled “Contesting the Foundations of Digital Public Infrastructure: What Digital ID Litigation Can Tell Us About the Future of Digital Government and Society,” where we brought together the civil society actors who have been litigating these four different cases.

August 28, 2023. Katelyn Cioffi, Victoria Adelmant, Danilo Ćurčić, Brian Kiira, Grecia Macías, and Yasah Musa

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August 28, 2023 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized  

Shaping Digital Identity Standards: An Explainer and Recommendations on Technical Standard-Setting for Digital Identity Systems.

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Shaping Digital Identity Standards

An Explainer and Recommendations on Technical Standard-Setting for Digital Identity Systems.

In April 2023, we submitted comments to the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), to contribute to its Guidelines on Digital Identity. Given that the NIST guidelines are very technical — the Guidelines are written for a specialist audience — we published this short “explainer” document with the hope of providing a resource to empower other civil society organizations and public interest lawyers, to engage with technical standards-setting bodies to raise human rights concerns related to digitalization in the future. This document therefore sets out the importance of standards bodies, provides an accessible “explainer” on the Digital Identity Guidelines, and summarizes our comments and recommendations.

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The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is a prominent and powerful standards body. Its standards are influential, shaping the design of digital systems in the United States and elsewhere. Over the past few years, NIST has been in the process of creating and updating a set of official Guidelines on Digital Identity, which “present the process and technical requirements for meeting digital identity management assurance levels … including requirements for security and privacy as well as considerations for fostering equity and the usability of digital identity solutions and technology.”

The primary audiences for the Guidelines are IT professionals and senior administrators in U.S. federal agencies that utilize, maintain, or develop digital identity technologies to advance their mission. The Guidelines fall under a wider NIST initiative to design a Roadmap on Identity Access and Management that explores topics like accelerating adoption of mobile drivers licenses, expanding biometric measurement programs, promoting interoperability, and modernizing identity management for U.S. federal government employees and contractors.

This technical guidance is particularly influential, as it shapes decision-making surrounding the design and architecture of digital identity systems. Biometrics and identity and security companies frequently cite their compliance with NIST standards to promote their technology and to convince governments to purchase their hardware and software products to build digital identity systems. Other technical standards bodies look to NIST and cite NIST standards. These technical guidelines thus have a great deal of influence well beyond the United States, affecting what is deemed acceptable or not within digital identity systems, such as how and when biometrics can be used. . 

Such technical standards are therefore of vital relevance to all those who are working on digital identity. In particular, these standards warrant the attention of civil society organizations and groups who are concerned with the ways in which digital identity systems have been associated with discrimination, denial of services, violations of privacy and data protection, surveillance, and other human rights violations. Through this explainer, we hope to provide a resource that can be helpful to such organizations, enabling and encouraging them to contribute to technical standard-setting processes in the future and to bring human rights considerations and recommendations into the standards that shape the design of digital systems. 

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June 1, 2023 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized