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RESEARCH TRACK

Human Rights & Data

How can technologies be used responsibly to assist people in need, prevent abuse, and protect them from harm?

Featured Work

Human Rights & Data

We must assess the comparative technological benefits, risks, and harms when deploying data-centric tools to document and monitor real-time sociopolitical and security conditions. This consideration is all the more critical for international organizations, policymakers, civil society groups, and technologists who have the power to weigh tradeoffs between data protection, privacy, and the rights and needs of vulnerable groups such as migrants, refugees, and the displaced.

report
Governing Artificial Intelligence
report
Refugee Connectivity
Book or Chapter
Big Data Analytics and Human Rights
Read on Cambridge University Press

Focus Areas

Data, Human Rights & Human Security

In today’s global digital ecosystem, cell phones can document and distribute images of physical violence. Drones and satellites can assess disasters from afar. Big Data collected from social media can provide real-time awareness about political protests. Yet practitioners, researchers, and policymakers face unique challenges and opportunities when assessing technological benefit, risk, and harm. How can these technologies be used responsibly to assist people in need, prevent abuse, and protect from harm?

Human Rights, Data & Migration

As data-driven technologies and digital ecosystems increasingly intersect with migrants, refugees, and the displaced, what are the social impacts, consequences, and tradeoffs? This project bridges the knowledge gap surrounding technological interventions, and addresses a diverse set of themes–movement, economic inclusion, integration, asylum, identification, information seeking, rights, health, and social support.