Digital Dilemmas Debate: Biometrics – ‘Overpurposed’ by design?

Digital Dilemmas Debate: Biometrics – ‘Overpurposed’ by design?
Online
September 30, 2021, 14:00 – 15:00 CET

The Digital Dilemmas Debates are a series of roundtable discussions between prominent experts and stakeholders from different sectors about the humanitarian digital transformation, its implications and the work ahead. Each month, they explore a different type or trend in the technologies used to respond to various types of crisis, and offer reflections on what is coming next.

Building on the seventh Dialogue event, The International Committee of The Red Cross has invited experts from the humanitarian, technical and operational fields to discuss what the introduction of biometrics might mean for humanitarian programs.

Host: Patrick Hamilton, Head of Regional Delegation for the USA and Canada (ICRC)
Moderator: Stuart Campo, Team Lead for Data Responsibility (OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data)
Speaker: Dorothee Klaus, Director of the Department of Relief and Social Services at United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)
Speaker: Elizabeth Shaughnessy, Senior Data Privacy Analyst (Oxfam)
Speaker: Sébastien Marcel, Professor and senior researcher in biometrics, security and privacy (University of Lausanne).

This debate will focus in particular on the specific mitigation measures (both technical and policy-related) that humanitarians should implement to use biometrics as responsibly and as safely as possible. How can we make biometrics work for humanitarian organizations? What programs stand to benefit the most from their introduction? And what mitigation measures can we put in place to prevent misuse?

Register here.

Article Topics

best practices  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  ethics  |  humanitarian  |  Identification for Development (ID4D)  |  Red Cross