Human Rights-Based Approach

Using a Human Rights-Based Approach we investigate questions to be explored at each phase of the data life cycle, focusing on fairness and debiasing AI.

Why human rights?

Human rights are the basic rights and freedoms that belong to every person in the world. They are inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status ( → OHCHR).

Human rights are based on three core principles:

→Equality and Non-discrimination: All individuals are equal as human beings by virtue of the inherent dignity of each human person, making human rights universal, indivisible, interdependent, and inter-related.

→Participation and Inclusion: Every person and all peoples are entitled to active, free and meaningful participation in, contribution to, and enjoyment of civil, economic, social, cultural and political development in which human rights and fundamental freedoms can be realized.

→Accountability and Rule of Law: Via international and national law, states and other duty-bearers are answerable for the observance of human rights, allowing for a normative approach and provisions for remedies in the case of human rights violations.

Our approach

A Human Rights-Based Approach applied to Artificial Intelligence aims to center equity & inclusion at the core of the machine-learning algorithms. Integrating human rights principles into computing technology can help educate the next generation of scientists and engineers to work for the public good, creating technology aware of and in line with human values rather than uwittingly harming them.

We believe that a human-rights based approach can inspire scientists and engineers to work in transdisciplinary collaboration with social scientists and those who will be impacted by the technology.

Why a Human Rights-Based Approach, instead of Ethical or Responsible AI ?

It’s important to note that ethics are situational, as well as crucially important.

There are +80 guidelines and recommendations on ethics and responsibility from universities, civil society organizations, research institutes, companies, governments and more. Regardless of their strength, the number and variety of guidelines create an à la carte application of ethical and responsibility principles, diminishing the ethics conversation. At the same time, many aspects of these guidelines are very abstract and have been criticized for not being directly actionable, both in academia as well as industry.

Human rights standards are built on an agreed body of international and national law, providing a common starting point among different actors, and making the conversation and objectives more concrete. As a result, we have chosen to center this course around a Human Rights-Based Approach to AI development.

The ultimate focus of Human Rights, guiding impact on humans towards human flourishing, is applicable to AI systems and their development, in other words:

“At its best, the digital revolution will empower, inform, connect, and save lives. At its worst it will disempower, misinform, disconnect, and cost lives. Human Rights will make all the difference to that equation.”

Michelle Bachelet, Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2019.

Resources

Digital technology + human rights

Human rights in the digital age – Can they make a difference? : Keynote speech by Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Japan Society, New York, 17 October 2019.

Key Concepts

UN Human Rights Office: “What are human rights?”
UN Sustainable Development Group: Human Rights-Based Approach – Understanding on a human rights-based approach in the UN context (with focus on sustainable development)

Legal Documents

Universal Declaration of Human Rights
International Bill of Human Rights , Fact Sheet No. 2 (rev.1) , UN Human Rights Office
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD)
Universal Human Rights Instruments UN Human Rights Office. List of international human rights instruments applicable globally. Includes both legally binding treaties as well as those not legally binding but set up standards, such as declarations, principles and guidelines.

Women’s Rights + Gender Equality

“Women’s Rights are Human Rights”, UN Human Rights Office

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