Biometrics in the Humanitarian Sector

This report aims to provide Oxfam with information backed up by evidence to take an informed decision about how they should engage with biometrics over the short term, i.e. three to five years. After providing context on how biometrics are currently used in the humanitarian and development sector, this report outlines the benefits and potential harms.

Key Insights

Widespread Deployment of Biometrics

UNHCR and WFP now operate wide-ranging biometrics registration systems. This broadens programmatic uses beyond refugee protection to cash-based interventions and voter registration.

Increased Pressure by Donors

Recent years have seen increased pressure to demonstrate the effectiveness of humanitarian interventions, alongside highly-hyped new technological tools such as biometrics. Stakeholders report that USAID and WFP are encouraging INGOs to integrate biometrics to meet such requirements.

Changing Regulatory Environment

Data protection law covers how organisations acquiring biometric data must process, retain, store and destroy such data. Unfortunately for INGOs, there is little coalescence of data protection regulation outside of Europe. 2018 will see the European General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), the most rigorous legal framework anywhere in the world, come into force.

Uniqueness and Immutability of Biometrics

Unlike names, appearance or home addresses, most forms of biometric data are singularly unique to the individual involved and cannot be changed. Fingerprints, DNA samples and iris scans, for example, are constant and immutable, making them a convenient and rigorous basis upon which to base long-term identification.

Biometrics for Verification (One-to-One Authentication)

Biometrics can be deployed to verify a beneficiary is who they say they are. This is also called “one-to-one” authentication, as it involves comparing the biometric data of an individual to only one biometric profile.

Biometrics for Identification (One-to-Many Authentication)

Biometrics can also be used to identify an individual amongst a database of biometric profiles. Both UNHCR’s BIMS and WFP’s SCOPE enable the registration of a unique identity for a beneficiary and then operate to enable staff to authenticate beneficiaries in a one-to-many comparison to biometric profiles stored in a centralised database.

Identifiability and Traceability

More than two million people worldwide are not identified by government documents, a considerable barrier to the delivery of humanitarian assistance. By assigning biometric identities to beneficiaries, organisations can ensure that individuals are kept within the oversight of the programme, and track better where the aid ends up.

Accuracy and Integrity

The most frequently-cited justification for biometrics is that they enhance the accuracy and integrity of development and humanitarian interventions by reducing fraud. Biometrics are billed as the answer to double-registrations of beneficiaries.

Simplicity and Efficacy

The introduction of biometrics into registration and identification has the potential to streamline beneficiary registration and speed up the delivery of humanitarian assistance. The efficiency effects of biometrics are primarily due to the fact that a digitised identification system reliant on biometrics eliminates the time-lag necessary to authenticate paper identity documents.

Reliability

Although biometrics systems are billed as an answer to the fallible analogue systems of identification and registration, biometric-based identification can return false matches. False negatives occur when the system does not identify a match when it should, while false positives occur when the system does identify a match when it should not.

Reusability

The ease with which biometric data can be shared, analysed and repurposed is both what makes biometrics so attractive to development and humanitarian actors, and what makes it so potentially dangerous, argue critics. Governments of host countries as well as countries of origin could obtain access to the biometric databases of humanitarian actors, either by request or by demand, and repurposed for law enforcement or national security screening, for example.

Security

The most persuasive argument levied by biometrics’ critics is that using biometric data places an enormous burden on organisations to constantly maintain a high level of technical and organisational security. The loss, theft or misuse of biometric data compromises an individual’s legal identity in circumstances in which they have few other options for establishing that identity.

Societal Impacts

Individuals may be reluctant to submit to providing biometric samples because of cultural, gender or power imbalances. Experts have argued that biometrics also have more intangible long-term disadvantageous societal effects and may entrench existing power disparities.

Key Statistics & Data

• 2 million people worldwide: Number of people not identified by government documents, creating a barrier to humanitarian assistance (p. 7).
• Over 70 percent of veiled Muslim women in Bangladesh: Percentage who refused to submit to iris scans or photographs due to cultural rejection of biometric systems (p. 13).

Methodology

This report is based on a review of the ways in which humanitarian agencies are currently using biometric technologies; relevant literature and resources, and interviews with key informants from humanitarian agencies with experience of using biometrics; biometric tech providers; and internal stakeholders within Oxfam. The research was complemented by desk research throughout the process, and took place from December 2017-March 2018.

Implications and Conclusions

The study concludes that the potential risks for humanitarian agencies of holding vast amounts of immutable biometric data (legally, operationally, and reputationally) and the potential risks to beneficiaries outweigh the potential benefits. The authors suggest that humanitarian agencies start from the premise that biometrics are harmful and only use them when the benefits outweigh the risks on a case-by-case basis. The study also recommends that humanitarian agencies contribute to better sector-wide understanding of the implications of biometrics, as there is currently a lack of evidence, research, or agreed-upon standards for using biometrics.