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.

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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.

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.

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.

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).

May 23, 2024 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized

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.

November 14, 2023 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized

Regulating Artificial Intelligence in Brazil

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

Regulating Artificial Intelligence in Brazil

On May 25, 2023, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice’s Technology & Human Rights team hosted an event entitled Regulating Artificial Intelligence: The Brazilian Approach, in the fourteenth episode of the “Transformer States” interview series on digital government and human rights. This in-depth conversation with Professor Mariana Valente, a member of the Commission of Jurists created by the Brazilian Senate to work on a draft bill to regulate artificial intelligence, raised timely questions about the specificities of ongoing regulatory efforts in Brazil. These developments in Brazil may have significant global implications, potentially inspiring other more creative, rights-based, and socio-economically grounded regulation of emerging technologies in the Global South.

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In recent years, numerous initiatives to regulate and govern Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems have arisen in Brazil. First, there was the Brazilian Strategy for Artificial Intelligence (EBIA), launched in 2021. Second, legislation known as Bill 21/20, which sought to specifically regulate AI, was approved by the House of Representatives in 2021. And in 2022, a Commission of Jurists was appointed by the Senate to draft a substitute bill on AI. This latter initiative holds significant promise. While the EBIA and Bill 21/20 were heavily criticized for the limited value given to public input in comparison to the available participatory and multi-stakeholder mechanisms, the Commission of Jurists took specific precautions to be more open to public input. Their proposed alternative draft legislation, which is grounded in Brazil’s socio-economic realities and legal tradition, may inspire further legal regulation of AI, especially for the Global South, considering Brazil’s position in other discussions related to internet and technology governance.

Bill 21/20 was the first bill directed specifically at AI. But this was a very minimal bill; it effectively established that regulating AI should be the exception. It was also based on a decentralized model, meaning that each economic sector would regulate its own applications of AI: for example, the federal agency dedicated to regulating the healthcare sector would regulate AI applications in that sector. There were no specific obligations or sanctions for the companies developing or employing AI, and there were some guidelines for the government on how it should promote the development of AI. Overall, the bill was very friendly to the private sector’s preference for the most minimal regulation possible. The bill was quickly approved in the House of Representatives, without public hearings or much public attention.

It is important to note that this bill does not exist in isolation. There is other legislation that applies to AI in the country, such as consumer law and data protection law, as well as the Marco Civil da Internet (Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet). These existing laws have been leveraged by civil society to protect people from AI harms. For example, Instituto Brasileiro de Defesa do Consumidor (IDEC), a consumer rights organization, successfully brought a public civil action using consumer protection legislation against Via Quatro, a private company responsible for the subway line 4-Yellow of Sao Paulo. The company was fined R$500,000 for collecting and processing individuals’ biometric data for advertising purposes without informed consent.

But, given that Bill 21/20 sought to specifically address the regulation of AI, academics and NGOs raised concerns that it would reduce the legal protections afforded in Brazil: it “gravely undermines the exercise of fundamental rights such as data protection, freedom of expression and equality” and “fails to address the risks of AI, while at the same time facilitating a laissez-faire approach for the public and private sectors to develop, commercialize and operate systems that are far from trustworthy and human-centric (…) Brazil risks becoming a playground for irresponsible agents to attempt against rights and freedoms without fearing for liability for their acts.”

As a result, the Senate decided that instead of voting on Bill 21/20, they would create a Commission of Jurists to propose a new bill.

The Commission of Jurists and the new bill

The Commission of Jurists was established in April 2022 and delivered its final report in December 2022. Even if the establishment of the Commission was considered a positive development, it was not exempt from criticism from civil society, for the lack of racial and regional diversity of the Commission’s membership, as well as the need for different areas of knowledge to contribute to the debate. This criticism comes from a reflection of the socio-economic realities of Brazil, which is one of the most unequal countries in the world, and those inequalities are intersectional, considering race, gender, income, territorial origin. Therefore, AI applications will have different effects on different segments of the population. This is already clear from the use of facial recognition in public security: more than 90% of the individuals arrested using this technology were Black. Another example is the use of an algorithm to evaluate requests for emergency aid amid the pandemic, where many vulnerable people had their benefits denied based on incorrect data.

During its mandate, the Commission of Jurists held public hearings, invited specialists from different areas of knowledge, and developed a public consultation mechanism allowing for written proposals. Following this process, the new proposed bill had several elements that were very different from Bill 21/20. First, the new bill borrows from the EU’s AI Act by adopting a risk-based approach: obligations are distinguished according to the risks they pose. However, the new bill, following the Brazilian tradition of structuring regulation from the perspective of individual and collective rights, merges the European risk-based approach with a rights-based approach. The bill confers individual and collective rights that apply in relation to all AI systems, independent of the level of risk they pose.

Secondly, the new bill includes some additional obligations for the public sector, considering its differential impact on people’s rights. For example, there is a ban on the treatment of racial information, and provisions on public participation in decisions regarding the adoption of these systems. Importantly, though the Commission discussed the inclusion of a complete ban on facial recognition technologies in public spaces for public security, this proposal was not included: instead, the bill included a moratorium, establishing that a law must be approved regulating this use.

What the future holds for AI regulation in Brazil

After the Commission submitted its report, in May 2023 the president of the Senate presented a new bill for AI regulation replicating the Commission’s proposal. On 16th August 2023, the Senate established a temporary internal commission to discuss the different proposals for AI regulation that have been presented in the Senate to date.

It is difficult to predict what will happen following the end of the internal commission’s work, as political decisions will shape the next developments. However, what is important to have in mind is the progress that the discussion has reached so far, from an initial bill that was very minimal in scope, and supported the idea of minimal regulation, to one that is much more protective of individual and collective rights and considerate of Brazil’s particular socio-economic realities. Brazil has played an important progressive role historically in global discussions on the regulation of emerging technologies, for example with the discussions of its Marco Civil da Internet. As Mariana Valente put it, “Brazil has had in the past a very strong tradition of creative legislation for regulating technologies.” The Commission of Jurists’ proposal repositions Brazil in such a role.

Additional resources

September 28, 2023. Marina Garrote, LLM program, NYU School of Law whose research interests lie at the intersection of digital rights and social justice. Marina holds a bachelor and master’s degree from Universidade de São Paulo and previously worked at Data Privacy Brazil, a civil society association dedicated to public interest research on digital rights.

https://vimeo.com/51589652

September 28, 2023 Dev Account Uncategorized

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

August 28, 2023 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized

Law Clinics Condemn U.S. Government Support for Haiti’s Regime as Country Faces Human Rights and Humanitarian Catastrophe

HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Law Clinics Condemn U.S. Government Support for Haiti’s Regime as Country Faces Human Rights and Humanitarian Catastrophe

To mark the second anniversary of the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, the Global Justice Clinic and the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School submitted a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Assistant Secretary Brian Nichols calling on the U.S. government to cease to support the de facto Ariel Henry administration. Progress on human rights and security and a return to constitutional order will only be possible if Haitian people have the opportunity to change their government.

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In the wake of Moïse’s murder and at the urging of the United States, Dr. Henry assumed leadership as de facto prime minister. The past two years, Dr. Henry has presided over a humanitarian and human rights catastrophe. He has consolidated power in what remains of Haiti’s institutions, and has proposed to amend the Constitution in an unlawful manner. Further, there is evidence that ties Dr. Henry to the assassination of President Moïse. Despite the monumental failure of Dr. Henry’s government, the United States continues to support this illegitimate and unpopular regime.

The letter declares that any transitional government must be evaluated against Haiti’s Constitution and established human rights principles. Proposals such as Dr. Henry’s that violate the spirit of the Constitution and further state capture cannot be a path to democracy.

This post was originally published as a press release on July 10, 2023 by the Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law, and the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School.

July 10, 2023 Dev Account 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.

June 1, 2023 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized

Relocation Now, Mine-Affected Communities in the D.R. and their Allies tell Barrick Gold

CLIMATE & ENVIRONMENT

Relocation Now, Mine-Affected Communities in the D.R. and their Allies tell Barrick Gold

As Barrick Gold prepares to hold its Annual General Meeting in Toronto tomorrow, Dominican communities impacted by the company’s Pueblo Viejo mine and their allies have issued an open letter to the company demanding immediate community relocation.

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The letter from Espacio Nacional por la Transparencia en las Industrias Extractivas (National Space for Transparency in the Extractive Industry (ENTRE) and the Comité Nuevo Renacer, alleges grave harms to nearby communities’ health, livelihoods, and environment due to the mine’s operations. The letter also raises concerns about Barrick’s plans to expand the Pueblo Viejo mine––already one of the world’s largest gold mines–– including by constructing a new tailings dam. Dominican, Canadian, and U.S. based allies, including the Global Justice Clinic, signed on to the letter in solidarity.

Last month, communities affected by Barrick mines in Alaska, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Nevada, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines came together in a Global Week of Action, calling out the gap between Barrick’s rhetoric on human rights and its record. GJC works in solidarity with communities near Cotuí impacted by Barrick’s operations.

This post was originally published on May 1, 2023.

May 1, 2023 Dev Account Uncategorized

Comments on Draft of the NIST Digital Identity Guidelines, Special Publication 800-63-4

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Comments on Draft of the NIST Digital Identity Guidelines, Special Publication 800-63-4

In April 2023, the Digital Welfare State & Human Rights Project at the Center along with the Institute for Law, Innovation & Technology (iLIT) at Temple University, Beasley School of Law submitted comments to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in response to a consultation regarding their draft Digital Identity Guidelines.

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In formulating these comments, we drew on examples from many other countries and contexts beyond the United States. After all, these Guidelines have the potential to shape the development not only of the digital ID systems that will be used by U.S. federal agencies, but also of digital ID systems around the world, given that NIST publications serve as a reference point and source of legitimization globally. Drawing on a global evidence base of the impacts of digital ID systems, our contribution to the consultation seeks to ensure that the Guidelines accurately identify and guard against some of the most acute risks of harm, particularly for those who are already experiencing marginalization and discrimination. We hope that our comments will provide actionable guidance to ensure that digital identity systems fulfill the central goal of advancing equity.

May 1, 2023 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized

Communities in Haiti Renew their Protests Against Newmont Mining Concessions

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT

Communities in Haiti Renew their Protests Against Newmont Mining Concessions

Today [April 26, 2023], Newmont—the largest gold mining company in the world—is holding its Annual General Meeting (AGM). This year, Newmont will be focused on pitching shareholders on its proposed acquisition of Australia’s Newcrest Mining Limited. On the other side of the world, Haitian organizations continue to protest its activities in the country’s Massif du Nord mountain range.

Newmont conducted exploration in Haiti between 2009 and 2013 under permits that covered swathes of the country’s North but has been unable to exploit its now-expired concessions due to political and legal obstacles. A revised Mining Law, drafted with World Bank assistance and presented to Parliament in 2017, has yet to pass due to Haiti’s ongoing political crisis. If and when it does pass, it is believed that industrial gold mining would commence. However, the gravity of the humanitarian situation in the country presents another significant hurdle for Newmont: recent reports suggest that gang violence, disease, and food insecurity continue to escalate.

Since 2013, the Global Justice Clinic has worked in solidarity with social justice and community organizations in Haiti who oppose metal mining. In the small, densely populated country, where many depend on subsistence agriculture, the environmental and human rights impacts of Newmont’s proposed open-pit mines would be disastrous.

This April, communities in the North of Haiti marked Newmont’s AGM by renewing their opposition to the company’s presence on their land. Sixteen local organizations signed a declaration which reiterates their resistance to metal mining and denounces, in the strongest terms, the environmental harm and loss of livelihoods that Newmont’s proposed mine would entail. Their declaration calls on all the communities in the world suffering under the threat of mining operations to “bring our strength and energy together to defend our lives.”

To bring these concerns to the attention of investors, the Global Justice Clinic has published a brief setting out a business case against Newmont’s proposed mining operations in Haiti. In the view of the Clinic and its partners, the material, environmental, and human rights risks of metal mining in Haiti outweigh the value of any investment. Newmont should dissolve its Haitian subsidiaries and responsibly disengage from the country, including by cleaning up its encampments.

Additional Resources

April 26, 2023.

April 26, 2023 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized