Digitalisation and development: Overcoming challenges with a rights-based approach

Over the last 20 years, digital technologies have reshaped the scope of international development. From the Internet of things and open data to artificial intelligence and robotics, emerging technologies have presented unprecedented opportunities for social and economic transformation across the world.

But their implementation is riddled with many challenges, not least because they can be abused by those in power once the development project or programme is over. Capacity4dev spoke to Dr Ben Wagner, Assistant Professor and Director of the Privacy & Sustainable Computing Lab at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, about the impact of digital technologies on development policy officers’ everyday work.

Capacity4dev (C4D): What advantages does digital technology bring to development work?

Ben Wagner (BW): When you look at the opportunities that technologies present, you have to acknowledge that at least in regards to certain areas like transparency and accountability, but even non-discrimination, if implemented right, technologies can bring enormous benefits.

But this can go both ways – especially in the context when the existing space for civil society is shrinking. This means that if you’re dealing with issues like migration, criminal justice or human rights, and you assume that by using digital technologies all your existing problems will just go away, you are likely to end up making things worse. Technology is not a silver bullet.

So what we’ve been discussing is how you can get beyond this silver bullet approach of expecting technologies to solve all the problems in the world, and, instead, see how technologies can go hand in hand with existing societal and governance processes. That’s because if it’s not contextualised and you don’t considers rights and values, you’re likely to do more harm than good.

C4D: The EU has begun adopting a rights-based approach to address this issue. Can you explain what this entails?

BW: The idea around the rights-based approach is basically to ensure that in all aspects of the development project you systematically consider human rights – from beginning to end.

It’s not about focusing on one right or another, or – what’s even worse – playing the various rights against each other. Instead, it’s about taking into account the universality of human rights, and in doing so, safeguarding accountability, transparency and non-discrimination.

Technology allows human rights to be supported and can create an enabling environment where they can be respected. But, of course, if technologies are used for mass surveillance, to systematically limit rights or exclude minorities and the most vulnerable, we end up with the opposite.

This is especially true of large development projects – if you do them wrong, they can cause significant harm to human rights and the overall quality of governance in a country.

For example, in the case of surveillance technologies, we see that even if they’re developed as part of an integrated security system to control migration, they often end up being used by the governments to suppress whole communities or prevent freedom of assembly. Instead of achieving the goals of the rights-based approach, such development projects end up only strengthening illegitimate government power while weakening democratic governance.

You always need to consider whether digital technologies are relevant to your project in the first place. And, if they are relevant, whether you’re making things better or worse from a rights-based perspective by limiting people’s rights or enabling individuals to access their rights.

C4D: What are some of the challenges faced by the EU Delegations in following the rights-based approach?

BW: We live in an environment where it is politically sexy to have more digital development initiatives, and I think the EU Delegations are under a lot of political pressure to more actively engage with digital technologies. At the same time, I hear from the staff at Delegations that they need more support in doing so. When we discuss these issues, people tell me all the time they have to implement new initiatives quickly, but lack expertise in implementing digital technologies. They just get to the consequences when things go wrong.

“We live in an environment where it is politically sexy to have more digital development initiatives”

And, of course, because no development practitioner wants to be in that position when they’re developing a project, they’re hesitant to engage with digital technologies in the first place. The goal of a lot of these conversations is to take away this fear and give people the tools to properly evaluate the technological needs and opportunities.

There are so many buzzwords flying around that it becomes very difficult to properly ascertain what is actually happening with regards to technology. Once you get past the buzzwords and into the more nitty-gritty of how projects happen, however, you find yourself in a position to not only make sure that the EU money is spent well, but that it actively contributing to a rights-based development agenda.

C4D: How can this be done?

BW: One way is to employ what I call the persona-based approach, where you basically focus in great detail on the individual civil society actors that your project is affecting. This human centric approach to technology involves focussing on individual human beings and how they feel about their rights.

By doing so, you begin to gain an understating of their lives, roles and meanings, rather than just looking at them from a distance. You no longer sound like a far-removed policy analyst, but instead more accurately characterise their specific contexts.

This kind of approach is very common in technology development, but less so in digital policy development. The goal is to learn to use it for figuring out the roles and contexts that you, as a development practitioner, need to understand to ensure that you effectively and meaningfully assess the impact of your work.

This article was written by Bartosz Brzezinski, Capacity4dev's editorial coordinator.

Image © Bits and Splits