Paper details

Paper authors	Olayinka Akanle
In panel on	Data and Displacement: Data Justice in Humanitarian Targeting
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

This paper examines processes of humanitarian targeting and ethical issues arising in the collection and use of large-scale data with IDPs in Northeastern Nigeria. The analysis is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with internally displaced persons in Maiduguri (Borno state) and relevant stakeholders in Nigeria. There were discrepancies in the definition of vulnerability in terms of data gathering, putting into question how targeting is carried out to identify vulnerable people and its implications for exclusion. Different data banks and reliability issues across institutions and actors make room for a multiplicity of data and problematic synergy relative to data and ethics issues. Different inconsistent ethical systems guide data gathering and utilisations in IDP camps: there are ineffective norms of recording and securing of informed consent during data gathering. States, partners, and IDP camps confront debilitating capacity gaps and modern equipment deficits that make updated data gathering, storing, retrieval, and utilisation difficult. Both paper and digital data storage processes are utilized with restricted access to only a few key stakeholders. There is vast data expropriation without standard recourse to justice and beneficence as ethical procedures in the humanitarian data space of north-eastern Nigeria as a microcosm of West Africa realities.

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