Digital technologies for birth registration must factor in data, gender considerations: APC

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), a network of organizations working for the positive use of the internet and digital technologies, has warned that the deployment of technologies such as biometrics to push the universal birth registration agenda must be done in ways that prioritize data safety, privacy and pluralistic gender perspectives.

This call headlines the content of a briefing note published recently by the network which is made up of 70 organizational members and associates present in 74 countries.

APC submitted the briefing note in response to a call for suggestions from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights made early this month as part of a study on the use of digital technologies to meet the goal of universal birth registration by 2030.

The briefing paper acknowledges that while digital technologies can significantly enhance birth registration efforts, the increased use of these tools “may lead to ‘an erosion of our parenthood’, amplifying some of the challenges which have historically been fought including multiple intersecting forms of discrimination, harassment and inequality.”

Apart from insinuating that birth registration using digital technologies “forms part of a global wider trend towards mass surveillance,” the APC says that it also somehow puts personal data and free gender expression in harm’s way if concrete measures are not taken from the very onset.

“Before talking about universal birth registration, it is imperative to define mechanisms of data collection, protection and governance,” the APC writes, before asking: “How is this data collected? Who decides the parameters and characteristics of the data? Who has control of this data? How is it secured? How is it used?”

As part of the right to data privacy and protection which everyone is supposed to enjoy, the APC argues that data subjects also have the right to understand “in very simple terms” how their data is collected, stored and processed.

“If we seek universal birth registration, governments must ensure the right to data privacy and give everyone, including marginalized groups, full control over their personal data and information online at all levels. Having that in mind, a lack of data is detrimental in many ways. Economic, social and public policy require data that is representative of the lived realities of each context,” the group mentions.

Further defending the APC’s argument about the gender factor, the briefing paper posits: “Future versions of Resolution 52/25 must be founded on an intersectional feminist perspective to ensure that the ongoing digital transformation can promote a gender-just world that is affirming to all individuals and their path to self-actualisation.

“All individuals must be able to take part in the global digital ecosystem, no matter who they are or where they are based, and must have agency over their complex selves, to enjoy equal rights to safety, freedom and dignity,” which means “equal respect for privacy, identity, self-expression and self-determination as well as equal protection from persecution, discrimination, abuse and surveillance, and equal access to information, opportunity and community.”

Among the other recommendations, the APC urges governments to develop and implement appropriate legal frameworks, promote access by marginalized and vulnerable groups to digital ID systems, ensure proper engagement with these digital tools, have a robust human rights impact assessment program, promote transparency and checks for all digital tools deployed, and establish oversight mechanisms.

Conversations about digitizing civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems and linking them with legal identity systems have been common lately, with the UNDP and UNICEF paying frontline roles.

The APC, meanwhile, has published similar reports recently examining data protection lapses and digital rights in Africa.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  birth registration  |  data privacy  |  data protection  |  digital identity  |  gender inclusivity  |  legal identity  |  SDG 16.9  |  United Nations