In her new book, Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, Research Professor in Humanitarian Studies and Professor of Sociology of Law, investigates the digital transformation of aid as a form of humanitarian extractivism. The book focuses on how practices of data extraction shift power towards states, the private sector and humanitarians.
Digital initiatives aimed towards 'fixing' the humanitarian system, making it better and more secure, also create risk and harm for vulnerable individuals and communities. Digital identities – ‘digital bodies’ are now a prerequisite for receiving aid and protection. At the same time, enormous databases holding ever more humanitarian data radically centralize vulnerability.
Drawing on long-term collaborations with aid actors, the book explores new humanitarian spaces and practices. This includes the politics of insecurity in humanitarian cyberspace, contestations over digital humanitarianism, the rise of a humanitarian airspace, private sector collaborations and wearable innovation challenges and ethics in global disaster innovation labs.
A light breakfast will be served from 08:30.
Program
- 09:00 Welcome and introduction by Kristoffer Lidén, Research Director at PRIO.
- Presentation of the book by Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, Research Professor in Humanitarian Studies at PRIO and Professor of Sociology of Law at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo
- Panel discussion Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, Morten Tønnessen-Krokan, Norwegian Red Cross and Anand Nair, Norwegian Refugee Council moderated by Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert, Senior Researcher at PRIO.
- QA
- 10:15 End
