Paper details

Paper authors	Robin E. Mays
In panel on	Responsible Innovation: One Step Forward-Two Steps Back
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Anna Skeels - Humanitarian Innovation Fund (presenter); Laura Walker McDonald - Ethics, GAHI; Robin E. Mays - Humanitarian Systems Research, CoSSaR, University of Washington

As the humanitarian community seeks to create incentives for greater innovation, we are equally burdened to create parameters for ethical and responsible innovation in accountability to humanitarian principles. Vulnerable communities depend on our capacity to manage consent, protection and privacy of beneficiary data, to provide access and transparency of information products and their use solely for humanitarian purposes. Innovation without ethical frameworks for monitoring humanitarian accountability is innovation without a regard for humanitarian effectiveness. Today, the growth of the innovation community as well the increasing awareness for the need to account for ethical innovation offers a critical mass for bringing forward actionable discourse for the ethical accountability of humanitarian innovation.

This report presents outputs of a community of academics, implementers and policy makers working within humanitarian innovation who explored the question of what ways can humanitarians come together to develop tools and methods for advancing the humanitarian accountability of innovation? It considers strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for advances in accountability to humanitarian values. It includes a recognition of strong system of values already embedded within humanitarian systems and day to day work through a range of well-established ethical mechanisms. From the RC & NGOs international code of conduct, to Do No Harm programming, to hippocratic oaths, the humanitarian community already holds advanced methodologies, frameworks and tools for operationalizing humanitarian values throughout practice. As innovation within the humanitarian space has increasingly brought on a threat of new technologies and methods that are separated from these established systems for humanitarian accountability, we consider opportunities to translate existing accountability mechanisms and methods for application in the advancement of ethical innovation.

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