Paper details

Paper authors	Kristoffer Lidén
In panel on	Governing digital risks in humanitarian action
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person & Online

Abstract

Humanitarian agencies have developed a range of policies and guidelines for dealing with the ethical risks of new digital technologies. In practice, this has resulted in a conglomerate of approaches that are commonly seen as too vague, unbinding and disparate for getting the job done. The ad-hoc and voluntary nature of ethical self-regulation also reinforces a hierarchy between well-resourced and highly bureaucratized agencies and smaller international or local agencies without resources for hiring the necessary expertise. Meanwhile, even the largest agencies have proven vulnerable to mistakes, hacking, extortion and data breaches, and they are subject to extensive pressures for sharing their data with host governments and donors. This situation leaves us with the question of what ethics is good for in addressing ethical problems of digital technology and innovation. In this paper, I try to get this discussion going by combining an analysis of recent scholarly and grey literature on ‘humanitarian technology’ with relevant literatures on ethics, digital technology and humanitarian action. I argue that while the expectations to the objectivity and regulatory power of ethics must be lowered, there is still an important role to play for ethics of a more reflexive and inclusive kind that cannot be replaced by law or bureaucratic governance.

Back