“Leapfrogging” to Digital Financial Inclusion through “Moonshot” Initiatives

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

“Leapfrogging” to Digital Financial Inclusion through “Moonshot” Initiatives

The notion that new technological solutions can overcome entrenched exclusion from banking services and fair credit is quickly gaining widespread acceptance. But tech-based “fixes” often funnel low-income groups into separate, inferior systems and create new tech-driven divisions.

In July 2021, the New York City Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer launched the NYC[x] Moonshot: Financial Inclusion Challenge. This initiative seeks to deploy digital solutions to address inequalities in access to financial institutions. As the Chief Technology Officer stated, “Too many people have been left out of the financial system for too long. This disparity means that financial transactions … end up costing more for those who can least afford it.”

One in ten Americans are “unbanked,” meaning that they do not have a bank account. People of color are disproportionately excluded from traditional financial institutions. Banks consistently operate fewer branches in Black, Native American, and Latinx communities, creating “banking deserts,” while the practice of redlining continues. Poorly-regulated predatory financial institutions such as payday lenders, which impose higher costs than banks and trap customers in cycles of debt, are highly concentrated in these communities and take advantage of financial exclusion. In New York’s borough of the Bronx, over 49% of households are unbanked and high-cost lenders significantly outnumber banks.

Unequal access to banking means unequal access to fair credit. This compounds inequalities, as a poor credit record increasingly determines crucial outcomes, including higher interest rates on loans, higher insurance premiums, and difficulty obtaining employment or housing.

NYC is pursuing technology-based solutions to address these issues. The Moonshot initiative, which seeks proposals “utilizing breakthrough financial inclusion technology” to bring the unbanked into the financial system, follows previous tech-driven schemes. A recent initiative involved IDNYC, the city’s official identification card launched in 2015. This ID scheme had sought to facilitate access to banking by providing government-issued IDs to groups previously unable to open bank accounts for want of official identification; the ID is explicitly available to undocumented immigrants. However, shortly after its launch, the city’s largest banks dealt a blow to the IDNYC scheme by refusing to accept it as sufficient identification to open accounts. In response, the Mayor’s Office turned to technology. In 2018, it solicited proposals from financial firms to introduce electronic chips—the same smartcards used in debit cards—into the ID cards. This would allow IDNYC cardholders to load money onto their ID cards and make payments using these cards. Such reloadable cards are known as prepaid cards.

This proposed integration of identification and payment functions was not unique. In the U.S., the city of Oakland’s municipal identification scheme enabled cardholders to have their welfare benefits deposited onto the ID card and make payments with it. Also in California, the city of Richmond’s ID similarly functions as a prepaid card. In 2020, MasterCard’s “City Key” card, which combines official identification and payments, was distributed to low-income residents in Honolulu. Outside of the U.S., MasterCard was involved in adding electronic chips to national ID cards in Nigeria, and the Malaysian national ID also functions as a reloadable debit card.

But the proposal to incorporate smartcards into IDNYC was abandoned. Dozens of immigrants’ rights organizations warned that the integration of payment functions increased immigrant cardholders’ risk of surveillance and profiling. Adding the chip would lead to “massive data collection” by the financial technology firm brought into IDNYC and, because such firms are legally required to retain information about cardholders, undocumented immigrants’ data could be subpoenaed by the Trump administration. The Mayor’s Office accepted that these risks were fundamentally in conflict with the inclusionary goals of IDNYC and withdrew the plan.

While the proposal was abandoned, the narratives and driving forces behind it have intensified. Turning to a prepaid card system to “eliminate banking deserts” in NYC followed a well-established script that promises to “leapfrog” over deeply-rooted social problems using new technologies. The Gates Foundation, McKinsey, MasterCard, and others have long furthered this narrative that groups left behind by traditional financial institutions can be reached through innovative technological solutions which “leapfrog” banks. Bill Gates was famously quoted saying, “banking is necessary but banks are not”—and today, actors which are not banks, such as payment technology companies and telecommunications firms, are increasingly offering “financially-inclusive” services such as mobile money and smartcard solutions in explicit efforts “to ‘disrupt’… traditional banking services.” Prepaid cards especially seek to bypass banks: by their very design they operate without any link to bank accounts.

As such, these technological solutions funnel unbanked groups into a separate, “parallel banking system.” Prepaid cards do not provide access to bank accounts, so cardholders remain unbanked. This is an inferior banking product; cardholders do not gain the same access to the services and fairer credit that bank accounts enable. Financial inclusion persists, but the unbanked now have smartcards.

Further, the companies “disrupting” banking are usually not subject to the same legal obligations as banks, nor do they provide the same financial protections. Within these separate, technology-enabled payment systems for the unbanked, the extractivism and predatory practices that financial inclusion efforts are supposed to address re-emerge. NYC’s Chief Technology Officer had lamented that financial exclusion means that transactions cost “more for those who can least afford it”—but when Oakland launched its smartcard ID, the company running the prepaid function levied countless fees on cardholders, including $0.75 per transaction, $1 per reloading of funds, and a $2.99 monthly fee. The fees were higher than those of banks. Further, the insistence that electronic payments will solve financial exclusion is motivated by a desire to monetize new customers’ transaction data. Companies are racing to “capture the data of the newly ‘included’” and uncover the “financial lives of the poor” as a new market segment.

As the Immigrant Defense Project and others argued, turning IDNYC into a prepaid card would therefore “be perpetuating, not resolving, inequality in our banking system.” Within our work outside the U.S., we see the same technological solutions being embraced, all while they siphon low-income groups toward less-regulated, separate systems. For example, in South Africa and Australia, recipients of state benefits are forced onto prepaid cards not linked to traditional bank accounts. Still, “digital financial inclusion” through these technologies is being hailed as the solution to financial exclusion.

The 2021 Moonshot initiative appears to be based on the same ideals. The very notion of a “moonshot” is solutionist—it connotes a monumental (technologically-driven) effort to achieve a lofty goal. Official “launch” documents state that technology can “help solve the most pressing issues of people’s lives.” Rather than seeking to work with banks, the scheme turns to developers: the unbanked need “new options.” This focus on technology can obscure the root causes of financial exclusion—namely racism, discrimination, and predatory financial practices. “New options” will too often mean separate, inferior systems; and eschewing attempts to resolve inequalities within the “old options” leaves harmful practices—such as the linking of everything from housing to insurance with credit reports, continuing redlining, and the closing of bank branches without regard for those left behind—unaddressed. 

September 21, 2021. Victoria Adelmant, Director of the Digital Welfare State & Human Rights Project at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law. 

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September 21, 2021 Dev Account Uncategorized  

Government’s new strategy grossly inadequate, says former UN Rapporteur Philip Alston

INEQUALITIES

Government’s new strategy grossly inadequate, says former UN Rapporteur Philip Alston

Privatization of the bus sector in England outside London, Scotland, and Wales has delivered a service that is expensive, unreliable, and dysfunctional, said New York University human rights expert, Philip Alston, in a new report. The former UN Special Rapporteur criticized the government’s new national bus strategy for England, which he said merely tinkers with the existing system, offering ineffective half measures that fail to address the structural cause of the country’s bus crisis.

The 38-page report finds that many people have lost jobs and benefits, faced barriers to healthcare, been forced to give up on education, sacrificed food and utilities, and been cut off from friends and family because of a costly, fragmented, and inadequate privatized bus service that has failed them.

“Over the past 35 years, deregulation has provided a master class in how not to run an essential public service, leaving residents at the mercy of private actors who have total discretion over how to run a bus route, or whether to run one at all,” said Philip Alston, who authored the report with Bassam Khawaja and Rebecca Riddell, Co-directors of the Human Rights and Privatization Project at NYU’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. “In case after case, service that was once dependable, convenient, and widely-used has been scaled back dramatically or made unaffordable.”

The UK government imposed an extreme form of privatization and deregulation on the bus sector in England outside of London, Scotland, and Wales in 1985, arguing a year earlier that competition would deliver “a better service to the passenger at less cost.” More than three decades later, the promised benefits have not materialized and the current service is grossly inadequate.

Researchers spoke to passengers in England, Scotland, and Wales who described a broken system of fragmented services, disappearing routes, reduced frequency, poor reliability, falling ridership, limited coverage, inefficient competition, and poor information. Average fares have skyrocketed, rising 403 percent in England since 1987, while ridership has plummeted, falling an estimated 38 percent in England outside of London between 1982 and 2016/17.

“Private companies understandably prioritize profits rather than the public good, extracting money from the system while cutting unprofitable but necessary routes,” said Khawaja. “The public has effectively become an insurer of operator profits, propping up private services with considerable subsidies.” Despite privatization, the government provides billions of pounds in funding for bus services annually, accounting for more than 40 percent of funding for bus services in England, and has allocated hundreds of millions more to support private operators during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bus service failures have restricted access to work, education, healthcare, and food. This has been especially severe for low-income people or those in poverty, as well as those in rural areas, older people, women, and people with disabilities. Inadequate transport systems also jeopardize individuals’ ability to take part in society and cultural life. And because bus services are operated by effectively unaccountable private companies, those impacted often have little meaningful recourse.

“The absence of a strong public bus system affects a great many people’s economic opportunities, but also their means to participate in their communities, travel to football matches or libraries, and visit family and friends,” Alston said.

Buses provide an essential service and account for some 4.5 billion journeys per year in England, Scotland, and Wales—the majority of all journeys on public transportation. More people commute to work by bus than all other forms of public transportation combined. They also boost economic growth, enable access to basic rights, alleviate poverty, and reduce congestion and greenhouse gasses.

The United Kingdom has international human rights obligations directly related to transportation. Physical accessibility is an essential component of many economic and social rights, but also civil and political rights such as the right to vote, to freedom of religion, and to assembly. Many residents’ ability to exercise these rights is directly contingent on access to a reliable and affordable bus service. Parliament should legislate minimum standards of transportation that UK residents can depend on, instead of leaving it up to the vagaries and predations of the market, Alston said.

Alston and his co-authors called on the governments of England, Scotland, and Wales to cease relying on private actors and market forces to determine access to such a vital service, adopt public control of bus transport as the default system, and provide the necessary financial and political support to local authorities pursuing public control or ownership of bus services.

“Unlike the current system, public control or ownership would allow for reinvestment of profits, integrated networks, more efficient coverage, simpler fares, consistency with climate goals, and public accountability,” said Riddell. “It’s also a more cost effective approach.”

“The United Kingdom is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and can afford a world-class bus system if it chooses to prioritize and fund it,” Alston said. “Instead, the government has outsourced responsibility for a vital public service, propping up an arrangement that prioritizes private profits and denying the public a decent bus.”

This story was originally published as a press release on July 19, 2021.

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July 19, 2021 Dev Account Uncategorized  

Public Transport, Private Profit: The Human Cost of Privatizing Buses in the United Kingdom

INEQUALITIES

Public Transport, Private Profit: The Human Cost of Privatizing Buses in the United Kingdom

The Human Rights and Privatization Project launched a report on the deregulation of local buses in the United Kingdom in July 2021. 

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The report finds that the government’s 1985 decision to privatize and deregulate the bus sector in England (outside London), Scotland, and Wales has failed passengers and undermined their rights. Taxpayers are subsidizing corporate profits, while private operators are providing a service that is expensive, unreliable, and often dysfunctional. Fares have skyrocketed while ridership has plummeted, undermining efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions. This approach has also significantly impacted individual’s lives and rights. We found that people have lost jobs and benefits, faced barriers to healthcare, been forced to give up on education, sacrificed food and utilities, and been cut off from friends and family. The government’s new strategy for England leaves this deregulated system in place, and does not address its structural shortcomings. 

The report finds that running a bus service premised on profit and market competition, rather than on the well-being of the public, leads to violations of people’s rights and is incompatible with human rights law. It calls for public control of bus transport as the default approach, which would be more cost-effective and allow for reinvestment of profits, integrated networks, more efficient coverage, simpler fares, consistency with climate goals, and public accountability. Given the importance of public transport on access to essential services and rights, it also calls for a statutory minimum level of service frequency.

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July 1, 2021 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized  

Why We Must Stand with Haiti’s Democracy Activists

HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Why We Must Stand with Haiti’s Democracy Activists

When tens of thousands of people are on the streets decrying dictatorial actions, they’re cheered on as pro-democracy protestors. Yet when similar protests occur in Haiti, they are diminished and overlooked. Being on the right side of history requires that we listen to the voices of Haitian civil society.

In the days leading up to February 7, 2021, the U.S. State Department announced its support for the continued rule of President Jovenel Moïse in Haiti. This position was in direct opposition to much of Haitian civil society, including its vibrant human rights community, which condemned Moïse’s occupation of the presidency as an unconstitutional prolongation of his mandate, which they understand to have ended on February 7. This interpretation of Haiti’s Constitution is shared by Haitian legal experts, including its judicial oversight body, religious leaders and activists. Haitian civil society has been sounding the alarm about Moïse’s abuse of power for years, documenting links to a series of massacres, corruption, and the proliferation of gangs. There has never been a more critical juncture for those based outside of Haiti to listen to Haitian voices.

To emphasize this imperative, the Global Justice Clinic issued a joint statement on February 13 calling for the U.S. government to address the human rights concerns of Haitian civil society and hosted a panel discussion with NYU’s Hemispheric Institute on March 24 to hear directly from Haitian human rights defenders and civil society leaders about the current situation in Haiti.

The U.S. government is not alone in giving short shrift to Haitian civil society. Media coverage has failed to adequately convey the widespread outcry against this administration. Nor has it captured the energy and hope that buoys Haitian human rights activists in this moment. Emmanuela Douyon is an economist and anti-corruption activist with “Nou Pap Domi,” a collective of young Haitians committed to fighting corruption, impunity, and social injustice. She’s inspired by the continued involvement of civil society, especially as “a climate of fear has settled in” the country over the last few months due to insecurity, political violence, and kidnappings: “When I see people who fought against dictatorships – who were victims and suffered a lot – and they come back out here to stand up and to fight, that gives me a lot of strength. When I see people from my generation and younger who say they’re going to keep standing and defending their values, the rule of law, democracy – that gives me hope that we can do more.” [1] Rosy Auguste Ducena, a human rights attorney and Program Director for Haiti’s National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH), describes how the continued broad-based engagement motivates her: “What enables civil society to continue playing its role… is that the people have shown they have the will to not give up in this battle – there is a will to see change… That’s the biggest message of hope we have. We’ve reached a moment where we, as civil society, are one with the people. When we see they’re taking their claims and demands into their own hands as their own, we don’t need to work for them; we’re working together and that’s the best hope we have in this current situation.”

Haitian advocates forcefully condemn the pressure by the international community to hold presidential elections this year and to facilitate a referendum to alter the constitutional structure of Haiti’s government. Woodkend Eugene, a human rights attorney from the Human Rights Office in Haiti (BDHH), acknowledges that while it can be “difficult for everyone to agree on a solution, what is certain is that what is happening right now is not the solution.” He stresses that the Haitian Constitution states clearly that there can be no amendments to the Constitution via referendum, that “we cannot go into an election with an electoral council that is not legitimate,” referring to the unconstitutional appointment of its members by Moïse, and in a context of “generalized insecurity where multiple people in power have been connected to armed gangs” (the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions against three such individuals in 2020).  Ms. Auguste also pointed out the potential consequences of pushing for elections now: “The international community might be pushing for it, but the Haitian people have said there are things they will not accept or tolerate, and that’s going into elections with this administration. The people won’t accept this referendum, and if this continues to be pushed, we risk falling into a post-electoral crisis… a bigger crisis than [what] we have now.”

Regarding the appropriate role of the international community and the U.S. government in Haiti’s affairs, Ms. Auguste made her message clear: “Firstly, we are not children…Let the Haitian people choose their own future, choose when elections are right for them and choose how their country will be led.”

Ms. Douyon urged the U.S. government to “avoid repeating history, as they did with Duvalier” and to be “on the right side of history” this time by “act[ing] to stand with the people.” U.S. support for the Duvalier dictatorship and its tragic consequences are well-documented.

The clarity and consistency in Haitian advocates’ analysis and recommendations is striking, particularly because Haiti is often painted by the media and foreign actors as a “problem-state”—a never-ending and uncontrollable locus of crisis where it is impossible to discern root causes. Each of the panelists demonstrated that these tropes should be rejected and that Haitian experts should be recognized for what they are—those best placed to assess what their country needs the most. If their recommendations were adopted, rapidly held elections would not be portrayed as the only viable path forward. Instead, the power grab of a man accused of collusion in grave human rights violations would be plainly unveiled.

When tens of thousands of people are on the streets decrying dictatorial actions, they are often cheered on as pro-democracy protestors. Yet when similar protests occur in Haiti, as they have over the last several weeks, these protests are diminished and overlooked. Being on the right side of history requires that we listen to the voices of Haitian civil society.

2021. Gabrielle Apollon

Gabrielle Apollon, Director of Haitian Immigrant Rights Project at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law.

[1] All of the quotes from the panel discussion have been translated from Haitian Creole into English.

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June 28, 2021 Dev Account Uncategorized  

‘Chased Away and Left to Die’: New human rights report finds that Uganda’s national digital ID system leads to mass exclusion

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

‘Chased Away and Left to Die’: New human rights report finds that Uganda’s national digital ID system leads to mass exclusion

Uganda’s national digital ID system, a government showpiece that is of major importance for how individuals in Uganda access their social rights, leads to mass exclusion. This is the key finding in a new report titled Chased Away and Left to Die, published today by a collective of human rights organizations. The report is the outcome of 7 months of in-depth interviews with a multitude of victims, health workers, welfare workers, government officials and other experts on the national ID, referred to by Ugandans as Ndaga Muntu.

Report cover featuring an interviewee holding documents and being photographed on a phone.
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The report argues that the Ugandan government has sacrificed the potential of digital ID for social inclusion and the realization of human rights at the altar of national security. “Ndaga Muntu is primarily a national security weapon built with the help of Uganda’s powerful military and not the ‘unrivaled success’ that the World Bank and others have claimed it is,” said Christiaan van Veen, one of the authors of the report and based at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law.

Obtaining a national digital ID is described as “a nightmare” in the report. Based on official sources, the report estimates that as many as one third (33%) of Uganda’s adult population has not yet received a National Identity Card (NIC), a number that may even be rising. Many others in the country have errors on their card or are unable to replace lost or stolen IDs.

Since Ndaga Muntu is mandatory to access health care, social benefits, to vote, get a bank account, obtain a mobile phone or travel, the national ID has become a critical gateway to access these human rights. As one individual in Nebbi in Northern Uganda, put it succinctly in the report: “Ndaga Muntu is like a key to my door; without it, I can’t enter.” This can literally mean the difference between life and death. A woman in Amudat, in Northern Uganda, described the consequences of not having the national ID for access to health care: “Without an ID […] no treatment. Many people fall sick and stay home and die.”

The report urges the Ugandan government to immediately stop requiring the national digital ID to access social rights. “Government has to go back to the drawing table and rethink the use of Ndaga Muntu,” said Angella Nabwowe of the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights, “especially when it comes to tagging it to service delivery, because many people are being left out.”

Researchers focused their fieldwork in various parts of Uganda on documenting evidence of exclusion of women and older persons from health services and the Senior Citizens’ Grant (SCG) tied to Ndaga Muntu. Since 2019, patients are required to show the national ID to access public health centers. The report details how women, including pregnant women, are ‘chased away’ by health care workers for failure to show their ID. Previously, there was no single, rigid ID requirement to access health care in Uganda.

In March, the Ugandan government also announced its intention to require the national digital ID for access to Covid-19 vaccines. But a lawsuit based on this research by two organizations that co-authored the report, the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights and Unwanted Witness, led to a quick reversal of that policy by the government.

The impact of Ndaga Muntu on the elderly in Uganda is equally heart-wrenching. The report recounts the story of Okye, an 88-year old man from Namayingo in Eastern Uganda whose date of birth was registered incorrectly, ‘making’ him 79-years old instead. The result for Okye is that he is not eligible for the life-saving government cash transfer for persons over 80 (SCG). Okye is not an exception. Senior sources confirmed to the authors of the report that at least 50,000 Ugandans over 80 have similar mistakes on their national ID that make them ineligible for government assistance or do not have a national ID at all. That number is almost certainly an undercount and points to mass exclusion among Uganda’s 200,000 older persons over 80.
The consequences of not having a national ID for older persons can be tragic. Nakaddu, an 87-year old woman in Kayunga district in Central Uganda told researchers that she did not get the cash grant for the elderly: “I don’t get the money, but I don’t know what to do. […] I can no longer dig. My arm is not okay. I cook for myself. Those ones [pointing to the neighbours] give me some food.”

The report blames the struggles and failures of the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) for many of the exclusionary problems with Ndaga Muntu. NIRA has faced criticism for its failure to enroll a larger part of the population, problems with issuing ID cards, high rates of errors, high costs imposed on individuals and allegations of bribery and corruption.
Perhaps NIRA’s biggest failure, however, has been the neglect of its responsibility for registering births. By prioritizing the registration of adults for the national ID over birth registration, the birth registration rate may have plummeted to as low as 13% of children under 1 years old. Meanwhile, the percentage of adults excluded from the national ID may be rising even as NIRA appears unable to keep up with the growing number of young people who turn 18 and become eligible for the national ID card.

“It is quite absurd to invest in registering the adult population for a national ID and forget about the next generation. It is as if NIRA’s left hand does not know, and does not care, what its right hand is doing,” said Dorothy Mukasa, Team leader at Unwanted Witness.
Digital ID systems have been widely hailed by international development organizations and private actors as ways to foster social inclusion and development and promise poor African nations the ability to ‘leapfrog’ towards becoming modern, digital economies. The report by the collective of human rights organizations shows a much darker picture of exclusion, missed opportunities, and significant financial costs.

Not only does the report estimate that the Ugandan government has already spent more than USD 200 million on its digital ID system in the past decade, comparable to the total budget of its Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development in that same period. But international organizations and bilateral donors have also poured many millions into Uganda’s health and social protection programs that are now risking to exclude millions from their reach because of Ndaga Muntu’s dysfunction. In an ironic twist, some of those same development partners, like the World Bank, are among the foremost champions of digital ID systems in Africa and have also funded NIRA.

Equally tragic is the fact that many of the benefits of digitalization are missed in this digital ID system. While NIRA maintains air-conditioned servers to house its National Identity Register in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, health care workers still register patients’ national identity information in paper booklets provided by NIRA. And the promised benefits of biometric verification are missed because many remote areas do not have fingerprint scanners or the internet and electricity to make them usable. And when modern biometric equipment worked, many older Ugandans, whose fingerprints have been worn away after many years of manual labor, were, as victims told us, “refused by those machines.”

The report recounts one macabre result of these missed digital opportunities, when an old and sick man was forced by officials to personally travel to a cash transfer distribution point to verify his fingerprints and receive his social benefit. The man set out on a boda boda motorcycle taxi and died on his way there. The last payment due to a deceased beneficiary will customarily be given to family members. Therefore, officials proceeded to take the dead man’s fingerprints.

A short documentary on the impact of Ndaga Muntu on women and older persons can be found here.

This post was initially published as a press release on June 8, 2021.

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June 8, 2021 Dev Account Uncategorized  

‘Chased Away and Left to Die’

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

Chased Away and Left to Die

How a National Security Approach to Uganda’s National ID Has Led to Wholesale Exclusion of Women and Older Persons

The Ugandan government launched a new national digital ID system in 2014, promising to issue all Ugandans with a national ID number and national ID card, while also building a large central database of identity information, including personal biographic information and digitized biometric information such as fingerprints and facial photographs. This 2020 report documents the continuing wholesale exclusion of large swaths of the Ugandan population from this national digital ID system, known as Ndaga Muntu. Based on 7 months of research together with our Ugandan partners the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER) and Unwanted Witness, the report takes an in-depth look at the implications of this exclusion for pregnant women and older persons attempting to access their rights to health and social protection.

Download report

The report begins with a thoroughly researched overview of the origins and design of the national digital ID system, which was originally described by a prominent government Minister as a “national security weapon.” Although it was strongly linked to national security priorities of the government, the national ID system was also intended to serve a wide variety of uses, including identification and authentication for access to social services and healthcare. However, the implementation of this ambitious system has been filled with challenges—with the result that up to one-third of the adult population remains excluded. Despite robust political support and several waves of mass registration, progress in increasing coverage in the system continues to be frustrated by implementation challenges including budget shortfalls, as well as physical, financial, technological, and administrative barriers to access. All of these challenges have been exacerbated by an environment marked by inequality and discrimination. 

This has led to severe human rights consequences, especially for vulnerable groups such as older persons and women, who have been denied access to lifesaving social services. The report describes how Ndaga Muntu has now become a mandatory requirement to access both government and private services. This includes access to health care and social pensions, as well as the ability to vote, get a bank account, and obtain a mobile phone. In short, exclusion from the national digital ID has become a life and death matter for many people in Uganda. The report draws on focus group conversations and individual interviews with affected persons, as well as discussions with numerous government administrators and scholars, to share deeply contextualized personal accounts of how this mandatory requirement has had an impact on individual lives. 

Based on these extremely concerning accounts of exclusion, discrimination, and violations of economic and social rights, the report concludes with a series of actionable recommendations to mitigate the most pressing human rights concerns. This includes the need to ensure that the mandatory national ID requirement does not continue to lead to exclusion from fundamental rights and services, for instance by allowing for the use of alternative forms of ID. It also emphasizes the need to re-examine whether a national ID system designed to be a national security tool is fit for the purposes of inclusion and human rights. 

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June 8, 2021 Dev Account Uncategorized  

GJC Issues Statement on Haiti’s Constitutional Referendum

HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

GJC Issues Statement on Haiti’s Constitutional Referendum

The Global Justice Clinic, the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School issued a statement on June 8, 2021, calling on the U.S. government to join civil society’s demand that the government of Haiti cancel the planned constitutional referendum in Haiti. The referendum, which will ask Haitian people to vote “yes” or “no” on a new Constitution, is illegal. It is the most recent, bold effort by President Jovenel Moïse to consolidate power and comes on the heels of dozens of presidential decrees that undermine checks on the executive. Haitian civil society has widely denounced the referendum, noting its illegality and emphasizing the impossibility of holding a vote under the current administration. International actors are increasingly recognizing the illegitimacy of the referendum, and the danger to democracy that it poses. However, continued technical support and provision of aid to the government of Haiti to hold elections means that international actors, including the United States government, are tacitly supporting the unconstitutional vote. With long experience working in solidarity with Haitian civil society, and building off our February statement, the clinics urge the U.S. government to urgently and publicly call to cancel the referendum.

Download Statement

June 8, 2021. Statements of the Global Justice Clinic do not purport to represent the views of NYU or the Center, if any.

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June 8, 2021 Dev Account Uncategorized  

Civil Society and Downstream Users to Barrick: No Dominican Republic Expansion

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT

Civil Society and Downstream Users to Barrick: No Dominican Republic Expansion

Open letters from 88 organizations and 15 jewelry producers highlight the human rights, environmental, and climate consequences of proposed gold mine expansion 

Today 88 organizations from more than 21 countries released a letter calling on the Dominican Republic and Barrick Gold Corporation to stop the proposed expansion of the Pueblo Viejo gold mine, while more than a dozen jewelry producers joined a parallel letter echoing civil society’s concerns. The letters raise serious concerns over threats to local communities’ rights and the risk of significant environmental damage. They question whether the government and the company will be able to fulfill their promises to promote sustainability and climate resilience if the mine expansion is allowed to continue.

Download Parallel Letter

The Pueblo Viejo mine, about 100km outside Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic (DR), is one of the largest gold mines in the Americas. Barrick is looking to exploit lower-grade ore by expanding its processing plant and mine waste storage facilities. This would reportedly extend the life of the mine into 2040.

Affected communities and local organizations in the Dominican Republic have come out in opposition to the expansion, local politicians and experts have criticized the risks of the proposed tailings dam, and religious leaders have raised the alarm about the expansion. According to Heriberta Fernandez from the Centro de Reflexión y Acción Padre Juan Montalvo (Centro Montalvo), “Mining has created irreparable socio-environmental damages in the Dominican Republic. The extractivist model violates the fundamental rights of communities and territories. The proposal threatens critically important watersheds for agriculture and doesn’t have a social license to operate from local communities.”

The letters, signed by human rights and legal aid organizations, environmental non-profits, mining-affected community groups, and jewelry producers, among others, focus on the potential environmental and human rights impacts of the expansion, the lack of publicly available information regarding the expansion process, the aggravation of climate vulnerability that the expansion would cause, and the serious allegations of water contamination at Barrick’s operations in the DR and at other Barrick sites. The letters highlight the potentially dangerous impacts of the proposed additional mine waste storage facility, called a tailings dam, on downstream communities and vital watersheds.

“Barrick claims it is ‘serious about sustainability’ and community rights, and the Dominican government has committed to being an international leader on climate justice. The available evidence suggests the mine expansion is irreconcilable with these promises and must be immediately re-considered,” said Sienna Merope-Synge of NYU Global Justice Clinic’s Caribbean Climate Justice Initiative, one of the groups coordinating the letter.

Organizations confronting Barrick’s damaging environmental impacts and marred human rights record in other countries around the world have endorsed the letters, which argue that the company’s actions abroad casts serious doubt on its willingness to uphold the highest human rights and environmental standards in the DR. At the Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea, Barrick dumped more than 6 million tonnes of tailings and 12 million tonnes of sediment from waste rock into a local river, under government permits. One organization from Papua New Guinea signed the letter with a message to communities in the DR saying, “We the Ipili Indigenous Women from Porgera are in solidarity with you in this battle.”

The letters were presented to the Dominican Ministry of Energy and Mines and the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources as well as the CEO and President of Barrick Gold and the President of Barrick’s Dominican subsidiary in advance of the company’s annual general meeting in Toronto.

May 4, 2021.

Communications from NYU clinics do not represent the institutional views of NYU School of Law or the Center, if any.

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May 4, 2021 Dev Account Uncategorized  

I don’t see you, but you see me: asymmetric visibility in Brazil’s Bolsa Família Program

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

I don’t see you, but you see me: asymmetric visibility in Brazil’s Bolsa Família Program

Brazil’s Bolsa Família Program, the world’s largest conditional cash transfer program, is indicative of broader shifts in data-driven social security. While its beneficiaries are becoming “transparent” as their data is made available, the way the State uses beneficiaries’ data is increasingly opaque.

“She asked a lot of questions and started filling out the form. When I asked her about when I was going to get paid, she said, ‘That’s up to the Federal Government.’” This experience of applying for Brazil’s Bolsa Família Program (“Programa Bolsa Família” in Portuguese, or PBF), the world’s largest conditional cash transfer program, hints at the informational asymmetries between individuals and the State. Such asymmetries have long existed, but information and communications technologies (ICTs) can exacerbate these imbalances. ICTs enable States to handle an increasing amount of personal data, and this is especially true in the PBF. In June 2020, 14.2 million Brazilian families living in poverty – 43.7 million individuals – were beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família program.

At the core of the PBF’s structure is a register called CadÚnico, which is used for more than 20 social policies. It includes detailed data on heads of households and less granular data on other family members. The law designates women as the heads of household and thereby the main PBF beneficiary. Information is collected about income, number of people living together, level of education and literacy, housing conditions, access to work, disabilities, and ethnic groups. This data is used to select PBF beneficiaries and to monitor their compliance with the conditions on which the maintenance of the benefit depends, such as requirements that children attend school . The federal government also uses the CadÚnico for finding multidimensional vulnerabilities, granting other benefits, or enabling research. Although different programs feed the CadÚnico, the PBF is its most important information provider due to its colossal size. In March 2021, the CadÚnico comprised 75.2 million individual entries from 28.9 million families: PBF beneficiaries make up a half.

The person responsible for the family unit within the PBF must answer all of the entries of the “main form,” which consists of 77 questions with varying degrees of detail and sensitivity. All these data points expose the sensitive personal information and vulnerabilities of low-income individuals.

The scope of this large and comprehensive dataset is celebrated by social policy experts because it enables the State to target needs for other policies. Indeed, the CadÚnico has been used to identify the relevant beneficiaries for policies ranging from electricity tariff discounts to higher education subsidies. Holding huge amounts of information about low-income individuals can allow States to proactively target needs-based policies.

But when the State is not guided by the principle of data minimization (i.e. collecting only the necessary data and no more), this appetite for information increases and places the burden of risks on individuals. They are transparent to the State, while the State becomes increasingly opaque to them.

Upon registering for the PBF, citizens are not informed about what will happen to the information they provide. For example, the training materials for officials registering beneficiaries only note that they must warn potential beneficiaries of their liability for providing false and inaccurate information, but they do not state that officials must tell beneficiaries how their data will be used, nor about their data rights , nor any details about when or whether they might receive their cash transfer. The emphasis, therefore, lies on the responsibilities of the potential beneficiary instead of the State. The lack of transparency about how people’s data will be used reduces citizens’ ability to exercise their rights.

In addition to the increased visibility of recipients to the State, the PBF also releases the beneficiaries’ data to the public due to strict transparency requirements. Though CadÚnico data is generally confidential, PBF recipients’ personal data is publicly available through different paths:

  • The Federal Government’s Transparency Portal publishes a monthly list containing the beneficiary’s name, municipality, NIS (social security number) and the amounts paid.
  • The Caixa Econômica Federal’s portal– the public bank that administers social benefits–allows anyone to check the status of the benefit by inserting name, NIS and CPF (taxpayer’s identity number).
  • The NIS of any citizen can be queried at the Citizen’s Consultation Portal CadÚnico by providing name, mother’s name, and birth date.

In making a person’s status as a PBF beneficiary easily accessible, the (mostly female) beneficiaries suffer a lack of privacy from all sides and are stigmatized. Not only are they surveilled by the State as it closely monitors conditionalities for the PBF, but they are also monitored by fellow citizens. Citizens have made complaints to the PBF about beneficiaries they believe should not receive cash transfers. At InternetLab, we used the Brazilian Access to Information Law to gain access to some of these complaints. 60% of the complaints showed personal identification information about the accused beneficiary, suggesting that citizens are monitoring and reporting their “undeserving” neighbors and using the above portals to check databases.

The availability of this data has further worrying consequences: at InternetLab, we have witnessed several instances of fraud and electoral propaganda directed at PBF beneficiaries’ phones, and it is not clear where this contact data came from. Different actors are profiling and targeting Brazilian citizens according to their socio-economic vulnerabilities.

The public availability of beneficiaries’ data is backed by law and arises from a desire to fight corruption in Brazil. This requires government spending, including on social programs, to be transparent. But spending on social programs has become more controversial in recent years amidst an economic crisis and the rise of conservative political majorities, and misplaced ideas of “corrupted beneficiaries” have mingled with anti-corruption sentiments. The emphasis has been placed on making beneficiaries “transparent,” rather than government.

Anti-corruption laws do not adequately differentiate between transparency practices that confront corruption and favor democracy, and those which disproportionately reinforce vulnerabilities and inequalities in focusing on recipients of social programs. Public contracts, public employees’ salaries, and beneficiaries of social benefits are all exposed under the same grounds. But these are substantially different uses of public resources, and exposure of these different kinds of data has very unequal impacts, with beneficiaries more likely to be harmed by this “transparency.”

The personal data of social program beneficiaries should be treated with more care, and we should question whether disclosing so much information about them is necessary. In the wake of Brazil’s General Data Protection Law which came into force last year, it is vital that the work to increase the transparency of the State continues while the privacy of the vulnerable is protected, not the other way around.

May 3, 2021. Nathalie Fragoso and Mariana Valente.
Nathalie Fragoso, Head of Research, Privacy and Surveillance, Internet Lab.
Mariana Valente, Associate Director of Internet Lab.

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May 3, 2021 Dev Account Uncategorized  

Everyone Counts! Ensuring that the human rights of all are respected in digital ID systems

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

Everyone Counts! Ensuring that the human rights of all are respected in digital ID systems

The Everyone Counts! initiative was launched in the fall of 2020 with a firm commitment to a simple principle: the digital transformation of the state can only qualify as a success if everyone’s human rights are respected. Nowhere is this more urgent than in the context of so-called digital ID systems.

Research, litigation and broader advocacy on digital ID in countries like India and Kenya has already revealed the dangers of exclusion from digital ID for ethnic minority groups[1] and for people living in poverty.[2] However, a significant gap still exists between the magnitude of the human rights risks involved and the urgency of research and action on digital ID in many countries. Despite their active promotion and use by governments, international organizations and the private sector, in many cases we simply do not know how these digital ID systems lead to social exclusion and human rights violations, especially for the poorest and most marginalized.

Therefore, the Everyone Counts! initiative aims to engage in both research and action to address social exclusion and related human rights violations that are facilitated by government-sponsored digital ID systems.

Does the emperor have new clothes? The yawning evidence gap on digital ID

The common narrative behind the rush towards digital ID systems, especially in the Global South, is by now familiar: “As many as 1 billion people across the world do not have basic proof of identity, which is essential for protecting their rights and enabling access to services and opportunities.”[3] Digital ID is presented as a key solution to this problem, while simultaneously promising lower income countries the opportunity to “leapfrog” years of development via digital systems that assist in “improving governance and service delivery, increasing financial inclusion, reducing gender inequalities by empowering women and girls, and increasing access to health services and social safety nets for the poor.”[4]

This perspective, for which the World Bank and its Identification for Development (ID4D) Initiative have become the official “anchor” internationally, presents digital ID systems as a force for good. The Bank acknowledges that exclusionary issues may arise, but is confident that such issues may be overcome through good intentions and safeguards. Digging underneath the surface of these confident assertions, however, one finds that there appears to be remarkably little research into the overall impact of digital ID systems on social exclusion and a range of related human rights. For instance, after entering the digital ID space in 2014, publishing prolifically, and guiding billions of development dollars into furthering this agenda, the World Bank’s ID4D team concedes in its 2020 Annual Report that “given that this topic is relatively new to the development agenda, empirical research that rigorously evaluates the impact of ID systems on development outcomes and the effectiveness of strategies to mitigate risks has been limited.”[5] In other words, despite warning signs from several countries around the world, including chilling stories of people who have died because they were shut out of biometric ID systems,[6] the digital ID agenda moves full steam ahead without full understanding of its exclusionary potential.

Making sure that everyone truly counts

While the Everyone Counts! initiative only has a fraction of the resources of ID4D, we hope to inject some much needed reality into this discourse through our work. We will do this by undertaking–together with research partners in different countries–empirical human rights research that investigates how the introduction of a digital ID system leads to or exacerbates social exclusion. For example, we are currently undertaking a joint research project with Ugandan research partners focused on Uganda’s digital ID system, Ndaga Muntu, and its impact on poor women’s right to health, and older persons’ right to social assistance.

Our presence at a leading university and law school underlines our commitment to high quality and cutting-edge research, but we are not in the business of knowledge accumulation purely for its own sake. We will aim to transform our research into action. This could come in the form of strategic litigation and advocacy, such as the work by our partners described below, or in the form of network building and information sharing. For instance, together with co-sponsors like the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), we are hosting a workshop series for African civil society organizations on digital ID and exclusion. The series creates a space where activists hoping to resist the exclusion associated with digital ID can come together, gain access to tools, information and networks, and form a community of practice that facilitates further activism.

Ensuring non-discriminatory access to vaccines: An early case study 

A recent example from Uganda demonstrates just how effective targeted action against digital ID systems can be. The government began rollout of its national digital ID system Ndaga Muntu as early as 2015, and it has gradually become a mandatory requirement to access a range of social services in Uganda.

To address the threat of COVID-19, the Ugandan government recently began a free, national vaccine program. One of the groups eligible to receive the vaccine would be all adults over the age of 50. On March 2, however, the Ugandan Minister of Health announced that only those Ugandan citizens who could produce a Ndaga Muntucard, or at least a national ID number (NIN), would be able to receive the vaccine. Conservative estimates suggest that over 7 million eligible Ugandans have not yet received their national ID card.

Our research partners, the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER) and Unwanted Witness (UW), sued the Ugandan government on March 5 to challenge the mandatory requirement of the Ndaga Muntu.[7] They argued that not only would the requirement of the national ID in exclude millions of eligible older persons from receiving the vaccine, but also that it would set a dangerous precedent that would allow for further discrimination in other areas of social services.[8]

On March 9, the Ministry of Health announced that it would change the national ID requirement so that alternative forms of identification documents, which are much more accessible to poor Ugandans, could be used to access the COVID-19 vaccine.[9] This was a critical victory for the millions of Ugandans who seek access to the life-saving vaccine–but it is also a warning sign of the subtle and pernicious ways that the digital ID system may be used to exclude.

Humans first, not systems first

The Ugandan case study shows the urgent need for the human rights movement to engage in discussions about digital transformation so that fundamental rights are not lost in the rush to build a “modern, digital state.” In our work on this initiative, we will remain similarly committed to prioritizing how individual human beings are affected by digital ID systems. Listening to their stories, understanding the harms they experience, and channeling their anger and frustration to other, more privileged and powerful audiences, is our core purpose.

Digital transformation is a field prone to a utilitarian logic: “if 99% of the population is able to register for a digital ID system, we should celebrate it as a success.” Our qualitative work does not only challenge the supposed benefits for these 99%, but emphasizes that the remaining 1% equals a multitude of individual human beings who may be victimized. Our research so far has only confirmed our intuition that digital ID systems can deliver significant harms, particularly for those who are poorest, most vulnerable, and least powerful in society. These excluded voices deserve to be heard and to become a decisive factor in deciding the shape of our digital future.

April 6, 2021. Christiaan van Veen and Katelyn Cioffi.

Christiaan van Veen, Director of the Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project (2019-2022) at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law. 

Katelyn Cioffi, Senior Research Scholar, Digital Welfare State & Human Rights Project at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law.

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April 6, 2021 Dev Account Uncategorized