{"id":352,"date":"2024-12-04T23:44:41","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T23:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpmu.mau.se\/msm24group1\/?p=352"},"modified":"2024-12-16T21:09:01","modified_gmt":"2024-12-16T21:09:01","slug":"intersectionality-in-humanitarian-interventions-the-role-of-technology-in-equality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpmu.mau.se\/msm24group1\/2024\/12\/04\/intersectionality-in-humanitarian-interventions-the-role-of-technology-in-equality\/","title":{"rendered":"Intersectionality in Humanitarian Interventions: The Role of Technology in Equality"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Intersectionality and the Impact of Humanitarian Aid<\/b><\/h4>\n

Humanitarian interventions aim to provide essential support to those in crisis, providing relief to vulnerable populations, but this is not as straightforward as it may seem. Despite good intentions, these efforts – aid distribution, development projects, or emergency response- can have both positive and negative effects as they unfold within complex social structures, whether intentional or not. Foreign aid has the potential to reinforce existing hierarchies, particularly those shaped by gender, race, class, and other markers of identity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A common misconception is that these types of unintended effects are unforeseen and unavoidable, when in fact, they can often be anticipated (Koch, 2020). Improving measurement tools and adapting trials are good practices that can be implemented, but by no means do they represent a solution. As long as a lack of objectivity exists, strategies that benefit one group to the detriment of another will persist. Looking back at the twentieth century, it\u00b4s clear that impartiality and neutrality are far from a-political, and aid can be instrumentalised by a range of actors (e.g., Terry, 2002). Efforts towards anti-racism, gender parity, decolonisation, and a move away from Eurocentric framings of both development and humanitarian action, will ideally reduce the fallout of external interventions, and coupled with a targeted intersectional approach, improve humanitarian practice.<\/p>\n

Intersectionality, a concept introduced by Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw (1989), examines how different axes of oppression\u2014such as gender, race, class, sexuality, and disability\u2014intersect and compound the experiences of individuals. It originally emerged from black feminist movements but has become a crucial tool in various fields. As highlighted by Roth, Purkayastha, and Denskus (2020), in humanitarian contexts, the failure to account for intersectionality can result in interventions that do not address, and often exacerbate, inequalities faced by vulnerable groups. This approach is key in designing programs and policies that address these complex layers of vulnerability more effectively.<\/p>\n

Technology: Enhancing or Exacerbating Vulnerabilities?<\/b><\/h4>\n

Technology has become a popular tool employed by humanitarian organisations, and is a good example of how its use can provide critical support or exacerbate vulnerabilities, especially for women and other marginalized groups. A recent study<\/a> published by Cambridge University argues that the use of digital technologies for forest governance such as camera traps and drones tends to transform these forests into masculinized spaces that extend the patriarchal gaze of society. A good example<\/a> of this is how in 2017, one of the cameras installed by the Tiger Project (a wildlife conservation movement initiated to protect the endangered tiger) in the north of India captured the image of a semi-naked woman urinating in the woods, which was then circulated around local social media groups. What was intended to be a tool for environmental conservation inadvertently became a source of harm for women.<\/p>\n

While humanitarian technologies can improve outcomes, their impact must be carefully considered through an intersectional lens to ensure they don\u00b4t reinforce existing inequalities or create new risks. Digital tools are becoming an integral part of humanitarian responses and increasingly facilitate access to support, offering better data for context analysis. Increased connectivity and digital access can empower affected people in conflicts, and digitalized services can allow humanitarian workers to more efficiently serve, or even predict, crises. Furthermore, artificial intelligence facilitates outbreak mapping and the development of treatments, biometrics and digital cash enable contactless access to aid, chatbots provide vital information and telehealth support, and digital tools enable children to continue their education and businesses to remain open.<\/p>\n

Digital tools don\u00b4t operate on a blank slate, and the access to them is not equal, creating divides across multiple levels. There is also an increasing concern over data protection and privacy, cybersecurity, personal liberty, and misinformation. Humanitarian organisations have the responsibility of making sure the data they collect is not misused or disseminated in a harmful way. The widespread use of social media platforms and artificial intelligence has brought on new risks, including hate speech and the spread of false information by using deepfake (generating synthetic video, audio, and text content). Lastly, technologies can be used in armed conflicts as a means of warfare, as cyber operations against electricity grids, health-care systems, and nuclear facilities have become a possibility.<\/p>\n

Ethical Technology Deployment in Humanitarian Action<\/b><\/h4>\n

To tackle even just one of these concerns, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)\u00a0<\/span>Centre for Humanitarian Data has drafted general guidelines<\/a> on how to manage sensitive data for the humanitarian sector. EU priorities linked to the adoption of digital technologies for humanitarian assistance include:<\/p>\n