As I dug deep last year into a (yet-to-be-published) study for the ILO on using Electronic Monitoring (EM) for labour rights issues at sea from an operational perspective, I could foresee the broader-picture challenges associated with EM in that context.
So I was pretty pleased to find out that this paper, as the issue was tackled not by fisheries people but by some very clever people from the Alan Turing Institute in London who work on the intersection of human rights, social issues, data, technology, and AI… which must a quite remarkable space to work… as each of them is already massive. (I would love to know more, and ideally work with them)
And I was even happier to read the following sentence.
Regarding maritime human rights, we argue that prioritising large-scale, top-down monitoring to collect larger datasets or market more tech solutions is not the best way for data and technology to contribute to transparency and accountability. Instead, we advocate for deeper engagement with affected communities.
This aligns very much with my advice on the ILO paper… yes… is potentially possible, and we will need to adapt some of the tools we already have for EM for IUU and fisheries management and develop newer ones besides the issues around governance roles and responsibilities… yet still an “ambulance a the bottom of the cliff”… the right thing is to prevent the problems to happen by engagement and economic penalties on the worst performing flag states… which are legally responsible on what happened on board.
Basically... tech may help… but Tech won’t save us! (a great podcast, by the way)
The paper reviews many findings from studies on fisheries (one of which I am a co-author) and maritime human rights investigations, emphasising the importance of a comprehensive approach combining traditional investigative methods with innovative technological solutions. It advocates for community empowerment, ethical data practices, and the integration of digital tools while upholding ethical standards and ensuring contextual specificity in tools. And that is something I’ll totally agree with.
In any case, and a usual… I recommend you read the original Trouble at Sea: Data and digital technology challenges for maritime human rights concerns. Is a great paper
I quote below the abstract and conclusions.
ABSTRACT
Recent years have revealed the severity and scale of human rights abuses at sea. Yet maritime human rights investigations remain challenging due to an array of difficulties, including physical inaccessibility and a complex legal environment. Improving the availability of data has been framed as a solution that will enhance transparency in marine-related activities and improve accountability for rights violations. Such enthusiasm has fuelled the development of technological solutions promising to identify abuses and safeguard vulnerable individuals. However, these efforts clash with concerns over the use of data and technology in human rights practice. In the context of such tensions, this paper studies how data and technology have been integrated within investigations into rights abuses at sea. We examine the challenges posed by transparency, accountability, and fairness regarding communities affected by rights violations. We ask: do data, and digital technologies offer effective means for helping to expose rights abuses and hold malicious actors accountable? Or do they introduce new threats to autonomy, privacy, and dignity? We present empirical research based on qualitative engagements with expert practitioners. We find:
an increased availability of datasets did not necessarily prevent harm or improve safeguarding for vulnerable people;
many tech solutions were detached from affected individuals’ lived experiences and appeared not to meet communities’ needs;
uses of data and technology could introduce or aggravate risks to fairness and accountability within human rights investigations.
We contribute a much-needed reflection on the actual implications of the use of data and techno- logical tools for communities affected by human rights violations. Regarding maritime human rights, we argue that prioritising large- scale, top-down monitoring to collect larger datasets or market more tech solutions is not the best way for data and technology to contribute to transparency and accountability. Instead, we advocate for deeper engagement with affected communities.
CONCLUSION
Oceans are a critical arena in global efforts to promote human rights. Increasing attention paid to maritime human rights issues has exposed the scale of the problems at hand. These discoveries have been driven, in part, by advances in data and the technology used to analyse it.
Like other areas of human rights practice, datafication appears to have introduced new skill sets, epistemologies, and professions into the space.
But despite the degree of interest in the academic literature in leveraging various data sources and developing technical solutions to the problem of challenging human rights abuses at sea, our research indicates these have not necessarily made marine spaces more transparent, increased the accountability of malicious actors, or improved safeguarding for vulnerable individuals.
Meanwhile, we observed a familiar series of concerns regarding data-driven technical interventions: they were said to introduce errors, contribute to biases, and lead to misinterpretations, which could all reduce investigations’ efficacy and feed unfair disparities in outcomes.
They could encourage technological solutionism, crowd the market for tools, and divert resources from where they were most needed. This misalignment—between affected communities’ needs and technology developers’ efforts—was spurred by a socio-technical environment where investments in ‘high tech’ solutions and their providers have been privileged.
We argue the path for data and technology to contribute to fairness, transparency, and accountability within efforts to challenge maritime human rights abuses is not through further investment in large-scale, top-down monitoring to collect larger datasets. Nor is it through pursuing more sophisticated tech solutions in a crowded market where existing products may not be meeting users’ needs. Instead, the field demands deep, localised engagement that supports affected communities to exercise their own agency. In a resource-constrained environment battling against severe harm to individuals and communities, the stakes of under-utilising or misplacing resources are high.
Our findings (Table 3) are likely to be echoed in other human rights fields and in the broader ‘tech for good’ sector. In particular, we suggest the needs, difficulties, and concerns that practitioners raised about investigating maritime incidents will be relevant to human rights investigative work in contexts where data is scarce and/or of low quality. These might include work to identify labour exploitation on land; investigations in areas with limited internet access or available data; and initiatives seeking to document events during armed conflict.