From dialect recognition software to complementing tools, many new solutions are making all their way into asylum strategies. While technologies and asylum procedures these digital solutions can easily expedite decision-making processes and offer governments with accurate data, they also release new vulnerabilities for refugees and migrant populations. And a lot more, these include potential ‘machine mistakes’ and improved surveillance – both of which could have dreadful consequences because of their rights. This article highlights the need for new governance structures and legal frames that can control who is accountable for ensuring data coverage, accuracy and fair final results.
Asylum procedures are intricate, and for a large number of people, the decision to allow or reject asylum can be a matter of your life or loss of life. Yet although a person’s directly to asylum should be protected under intercontinental law, the procedure itself generally entails significant and agonizing delays which could have an adverse impact on all their mental overall health. In addition , migrants are forced to relive their experiences of persecution and risk dehumanisation as they navigate a complex paperwork staffed by officials exactly who are not really acquainted with the complexities of asylum rights.
Against this backdrop, a large number of countries happen to be increasingly employing solutions to reduces costs of asylum steps. These cover anything from talk and vernacular recognition program to help asylum seekers submit their very own applications, iris scanning technology that can distinguish a refugee’s place of beginning, and methods that match migrants with communities in resettlement countries. In the case of these kinds of apps, they could be accompanied by a hosting server of predictably routine tech issues that might be considered trivial in a consumer context although can currently have far more serious implications meant for migrants’ rights.