IEAG Invites Comments on Data-Related Rights

As reported in the IIED Sustainable Development & Practice,  in a blog post two of the members of the UN Secretary-General's Independent Expert Advisory Group (IEAG) on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development,  Carmen Barroso, Regional Director of the International Planned Parenthood Western Hemishere Region and Katell Le Goulven, Chief of Policy Planning, UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) have highlighted that the  consultations conducted by the Group have  indicated a shared concern for data-related rights. As they note, while data have the potential to empower people, there are privacy and accessibility implications that also need to be considered. 

According to Barroso and Goulven, the Group's consultations identified the rights to: identity (right to be counted); privacy (right to be forgotten); participation; freedom of expression/speech; ownership (right to use personal data); access data about you (sale of data); principles of consent; due process; protection from discriminatory uses of data; and non-discrimination and equality (how data hides or shows inequalities among population subgroups).

Input on this topic, specifically: what rights should be prioritized in the IAEG's report and if any rights are missing; whether there are areas where “new data” require new norms, policies and frameworks for a rights-based approach to the data revolution and whether there are gaps that should be highlighted in the report; how the IEAG can ensure that data support the right to participation in data collection and data access; and how the IEAG should reconcile the tension between the need for disaggregated data to understand different circumstances, and concerns that such disaggregation could infringe on privacy rights is invited by the authors.

Individuals wishing to contribute and to share their expertise and thoughts with the Group should email undatarevolution@gmail.com with the subject line “rights-based data revolution.”

For further information please visit IEAG Blog and the IISD RS Story on IEAG Consultation

For IIED posting see http://sd.iisd.org/news/iaeg-invites-comments-on-data-related-rights