14 October 2014: Consultations conducted by the UN Secretary-General’s Independent Expert Advisory Group (IEAG) on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development have highlighted a shared concern for data-related rights, according to a blog post by two members of the Group, Carmen Barroso, the Regional Director, International Planned Parenthood Federation, Western Hemisphere Region, and Katell Le Goulven, Chief of Policy Planning, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). They note that, while data have the potential to empower people, there are privacy and accessibility implications that need to be considered.

Barroso and Goulven say the Group’s consultations identified the rights to: identity (right to be counted); privacy (right to be forgotten); participation; freedom of expression/speech; ownership (right to use personal data); access data about you (sale of data); principles of consent; due process; protection from discriminatory uses of data; and non-discrimination and equality (how data hides or shows inequalities among population subgroups).

The authors are inviting input on this topic, specifically: what rights should be prioritized in the IAEG’s report and if any rights are missing; whether there are areas where “new data” require new norms, policies and frameworks for a rights-based approach to the data revolution and whether there are gaps that should be highlighted in the report; how the IEAG can ensure that data support the right to participation in data collection and data access; and how the IEAG should reconcile the tension between the need for disaggregated data to understand different circumstances, and concerns that such disaggregation could infringe on privacy rights.

Individuals are invited to share their expertise and thoughts with the Group by emailing undatarevolution@gmail.com with the subject line “rights-based data revolution.” [IEAG Blog] [IISD RS Story on IEAG Consultation]