Emerging Technologies and Affected Communities

This project is now closed.

This System Innovation Partnership (SIP) built on the rich insights generated by our earlier Emerging Technology SIP.

What was the innovation?

The growing integration of digital technologies into humanitarian response, including biometrics, artificial intelligence (AI), digital cash transfers, and digital feedback systems, has been widely promoted as a pathway to improved efficiency, transparency, and accountability. Within humanitarian policy discourse, digitalisation is frequently framed as inherently supportive of accountability to affected populations (AAP), enabling participation, voice, and redress at scale. However, emerging evidence shows that these technologies can also reproduce or intensify existing power asymmetries between humanitarian actors and crisis-affected communities.

In response to this tension, this research led by CLEAR Global sought to address a critical evidence gap by centring the perspectives of affected people and generating practical insights to inform a community-facing toolkit. This work aimed to strengthen rights awareness, improve recognition of digital risks, and build the confidence of crisis-affected populations to question or challenge how humanitarian technologies are deployed.

How was this achieved?

Phase I, conducted between January and March 2025, focused on supporting humanitarian organisations to design and deploy digital technologies in ways that are ethical, inclusive, and participatory. A core message of the research was that digital tools should be developed with diverse members of crisis-affected communities so that they can function effectively as accountable humanitarian instruments rather than externally imposed systems.

Phase 1 further emphasised that meaningful engagement with digital systems requires more than basic operational familiarity. Crisis-affected populations must also be supported to understand data-related risks, recognise misinformation, and navigate digital platforms safely.

Building on this, Phase II shifted the focus from how humanitarian organisations design and deploy technology toward how crisis-affected populations themselves can better understand, question, and hold to account the use of those technologies in practice. The research aimed to generate actionable evidence that will inform the development of a community-facing toolkit designed to help people understand their rights in relation to humanitarian digital systems, recognise and manage risks such as data misuse, exclusion, or surveillance, navigate language and literacy barriers, and feel confident raising concerns or seeking accountability from humanitarian actors. To achieve this, the study explored what crisis-affected communities currently misunderstand about humanitarian digital technologies and what information they need in order to navigate them safely.

It also examined how language, literacy, cultural norms, and communication practices shape people’s ability to interpret digital risks and rights, as well as how communities currently attempt to raise concerns—or what barriers prevent them from doing so. An additional focus was identifying the formats, languages, and communication channels that would make a community-facing toolkit accessible, trustworthy, and practically useful.

The research outputs are designed to support both operational learning and the development of the toolkit itself. These include a final report presenting the findings and providing recommendations. The research also reflects on opportunities for co-creation and outlines ways in which communities can remain actively involved as the toolkit evolves. In addition, the research produced a complete dataset consisting of key informant interviews, workshop documentation, and related materials, creating an evidence base that can inform further work on digital accountability and community-centred technology governance in humanitarian contexts.

Together, these efforts contribute to a broader shift within the humanitarian innovation landscape: moving from technology-driven adoption toward approaches that foreground rights, trust, and the agency of affected populations in shaping how digital systems are used.