The term „refugee camp” is often misleading. Many of the facilities where the world’s 65 million people are fleeing war and disasters resemble small towns more than comfortable camps. Because tents and caravans sometimes stretch for miles in urban-style grids, aid agencies and governments typically use satellite imagery and other surveillance technologies to control movement in and out of these sprawling installations.
As new technologies are now frequently used in managing humanitarian crises, data breaches of digital records to track refugees Created new risks. Collecting data on marginalized groups in conflict zones is notoriously dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands – although the development of digital databases on Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh has recently Also linked to discrimination and harassment.
In humanitarian crises, technological innovations are not easily translated into ethical advances and sometimes resemble an Orwellian narrative of tight control over undesirable populations. It serves as another unpleasant reminder of what refugees have often lost: their homes, livelihoods, families, freedom of movement – and their privacy.
While all of these factors are of serious concern, aid agencies also show that technology can be combined with ethical considerations to move toward a more flexible and human-centered emergency relief system. We believe there are many possibilities for using technology to provide refugees with greater dignity.
Choice and autonomy
Given the remoteness of many refugee camps in places like Uganda, Bangladesh and Kenya, the technology could help solve some of the biggest problems facing the world’s refugees. It is already being used to improve refugees’ access to finance, support their personal autonomy and give them new choices.
While providing blankets and food inside a camp may have its uses in some situations, such manuals often create relationships of dependency when people are confined inside camps. In Jordan, A Collaboration It uses eye scanning technology to allow humanitarian organizations and financial institutions to access cash assistance outside of refugee camps. This is Helps to cut Reduces overhead costs and the role of financial intermediaries, meaning more money can go to refugees.
Eye-scanning machines have been placed in many local banks and supermarkets across Jordan, where refugees can collect cash – averaging $125-150 per month – without being confined to camps. This approach – it uses Blockchain technology To manage aid payments provided by the UN’s World Food Program – allowing refugees to move more freely than before and maintain contact with relatives elsewhere. It helps stabilize social and economic support networks that are critical to personal well-being and long-term resilience.
Other applications of technology in humanitarian crises often revolve around mobile phones. In facilities such as Kenya’s Dadaab and Jordan’s Za’atari camps, it provides support for refugees to learn how to start businesses, communicate with customers and suppliers, and get paid.
The technology has also been used in camps such as Azraq in Jordan and Kakuma in Kenya. Offers online higher education With the support of universities such as Geneva and Princeton.
3-D printing is also being explored to help refugees access critical supplies. Jordanian organization Refugee open goods It is trying to bring vital medical equipment, including prostheses, to those wounded in the Syrian civil war. It aims to create an open source movement around 3-D printing prosthetics for refugees and bring innovation to the humanitarian sector.
Humanitarian relief is not just about helping people survive in hostile settlements – it is also about restoring hope and self-esteem to those affected by conflict, economic upheaval or natural disaster. Used responsibly, technology can give new life to humanitarian ethical principles. In the process, it can disrupt the aid system by bringing new ideas, approaches and systems into the field to empower refugees and rebuild their livelihoods.
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The novelty of these examples is not limited to technological innovation – it can also serve nefarious purposes, whether in refugee camps or more modern cities, given the various ways in which technology and data reinforce conscious or unconscious biases. Instead, we should seek to harness the good that technology can bring by creatively combining new technologies with ethics to bring back the ideals of human dignity, participation and autonomy to some of the world’s most disenfranchised.