A Rights-based Approach to Information in Humanitarian Assistance

Humanitarian use of digital data: the coming crisis Humanitarian assistance is increasingly digital data-driven and dependent on information communication technologies (ICTs). Humanitarian actors increasingly use ICTs as a core component of their work, including satellite and drone imagery analysis and mobile surveys. Meanwhile, crisis-affected populations increasingly rely on mobile technology to maintain contact with loved ones and diasporas, locate and access aid, transfer money, and identify migration routes.1 These developments, represent a pivot point in the history of the humanitarian project that requires new doctrine and norms. In this brief report, we provide a commentary that accompanies our report, the Signal Code: A Human Rights Approach to Information During Crisis,2 and seek to identify and explain the role that a rights-based approach to data and ICTs may have in retrofitting current humanitarian practice to meet the challenges it now faces. Humanitarians have faced such consequential moments before, transforming the field both for better and for worse. The failures of the humanitarian response during the 1994 Great Lakes refugee crisis began an internal process which lead to the creation and adoption of the Humanitarian Charter and Sphere.3 These standards, which are rooted in a rights-based approach,4 drove the development of professional ethics and minimum technical standards which today shape humanitarian capacity and competence around five recognized ...
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Source Type: research