Abstract
This article addresses the question of how ‘Country of Origin Information’ (COI) reports—that is, research developed and used to support decision-making in the asylum process—can be published in an ethical manner. The article focuses on the risk that published COI reports could be misused and thereby harm the subjects of the reports and/or those involved in their development. It supports a situational approach to assessing data ethics when publishing COI reports, whereby COI service providers must weigh up the benefits and harms of publication based, inter alia, on the foreseeability and probability of harm due to potential misuse of the research, the public good nature of the research, and the need to balance the rights and duties of the various actors in the asylum process, including asylum seekers themselves. Although this article focuses on the specific question of ‘how to publish COI reports in an ethical manner’, it also intends to promote further research on data ethics in the asylum process, particularly in relation to refugees, where more foundational issues should be considered.
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Notes
- 1.
For the sake of simplicity, we refer to COI ‘reports’, however in practice these can take the form (inter alia) of reports, fact sheets, responses to specific queries and documentation packages, see ACCORD (2013, p. 17).
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
See ACCORD (2013, p. 12) et seq. Inter alia, the UNHCR (2011) has underscored in its guidance the importance for decision-makers to have knowledge about conditions in an applicant’s country of origin in order to assess asylum claims (para 42). Within the EU, the EU Asylum Procedures Directive 2005 stipulates that border authorities must examine ‘precise and up-to-date information…obtained from various sources’ (Art 8(2)(b) Council Directive 2005/85/EC).
- 7.
Article 1(A)(2), UN 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees http://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10.html. This Convention is grounded in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, recognizing the right of persons to ‘seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution’ http://www.un.org/en/udhrbook/pdf/udhr_booklet_en_web.pdf
- 8.
See IAS (2009). For a critical assessment of the use of COI by the UK Home Office, see UK Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Agencies (2017). Examples of COI standards and methodologies that have been promulgated include: ACCORD (2013), UNHCR (2004), European Comission (2008), and EASO (2012).
- 9.
See for example the ‘Eritrea Controversy’ (the 2014 decision of the Danish authorities to suspend refugee status determination for Eritrean asylum seekers, and subsequent volte-face, was based on a politicized COI report produced by the Danish Immigration Service as part of a strategic effort to pursue restrictive asylum policies) (Van der Kist et al. 2019).
- 10.
See Art 16(1) of the EU Asylum Procedures Directive 2005 (n 6), and ACCORD (2013), Principle 2.2.2 (p 37).
- 11.
See n 7 and Asylos and Haagsma (2017).
- 12.
Regulation (EU) 2016/679 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC.
- 13.
See further ACCORD (2013), Principle 2.2.4 (p 38).
- 14.
See n 12, Recital 26, and Article 4(1) (defining ‘personal data’ as ‘any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person’).
- 15.
See further UNHCR (2018) at paragraph 2.4.2 (discussing the risk of re-identification when sharing aggregate data).
- 16.
See European Commission (2005), European Charter for Researchers, which recognizes ‘research freedom’ as the first general principle https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/am509774cee_en_e4.pdf, p 11.
- 17.
Kuhlau et al. (2008) describe this as a ‘duty to consider whether to refrain from publishing or sharing sensitive information when the information is of such a character that it could invite misuse’. See further UNDG (2017) for an articulation of the situational approach to data ethics in the context of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
- 18.
However, Bezuidenhout (2013) notes that, at least as of 2011, no papers were refused publication, as part of the open science journal reviews, on the grounds of dual-use potential.
- 19.
The scope of ‘reasonable’ measures must be assessed relative to professional and resource capacity. Thus, what is considered reasonable care or precaution by a volunteer COI service provider with limited financial resources will differ from the measures expected to be taken by a large, well-funded COI service provider (Kuhlau et al. 2008).
- 20.
See n 8, p 22 et seq.
- 21.
See also Taylor et al. (2017).
- 22.
See for example SSRN, question 12, https://www.ssrn.com/en/index.cfm/ssrn-faq/#ssrn_copyright
- 23.
See Institute of Medicine and National Research Council (2006), ch 4.
- 24.
See further Kuhlau et al. (2008) discussing the formulation of ethical codes and guidelines to address dual use concerns in scientific and policy communities.
- 25.
See further OHCHR (2018), 3–6 (‘Participation’).
- 26.
See further the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) Declaration (2002), https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read
- 27.
- 28.
By way of analogy, Langat et al. (2011) refer to the ‘public notion of health’ as intimately tied to notions of social justice and equity.
- 29.
Copyright laws generally permit ‘fair use’ of protected works for (personal or scholarly) non-commercial purposes. See SSRN’s Copyright policy at question 11, https://www.ssrn.com/en/index.cfm/ssrn-faq/#ssrn_copyright
- 30.
On the importance of informed consent and information provision in supporting the digital agency of refugees, see further Kaurin (2019).
- 31.
On the politics of knowledge production in the context of COI, see further Van der Kist et al. (2019).
- 32.
See also n 19.
- 33.
See https://www.ecoi.net/en/document-search/?asalt= and http://www.refworld.org/type,COUNTRYREP,,,,,0.html.
- 34.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Asylos for the fruitful interactions on a report about how to ethically publish COI reports, which contributed to inform some of the research presented in this article. Asylos is an international network of volunteers who research vital information to support people fleeing war, violence, persecution and grave threats with claiming their right to asylum. Research for this article has been supported by Privacy and Trust Stream - Social lead of the PETRAS Internet of Things research hub. PETRAS is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), grant agreement no. EP/N023013/1; and by a Microsoft academic grant.
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Aggarwal, N., Floridi, L. (2020). Towards the Ethical Publication of Country of Origin Information (COI) in the Asylum Process. In: Burr, C., Milano, S. (eds) The 2019 Yearbook of the Digital Ethics Lab. Digital Ethics Lab Yearbook. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29145-7_6
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