“The role of New Technologies of Information (NTIs) in the politics and practice of the international protection regime supporting civilians in conflict : identity crisis and regime alteration”

The digital turn has fundamentally changed the way we understand conflict realities and their impacts on civilian populations. The research attempts to bring intelligibility to the current reconfiguration of the politics and practices around the ‘management of precarious lives’ with respect to the technological dimensions. The international protection regime supporting civilians in conflict encompasses implicit or explicit principles – notably Humanity – as well as norms, rules and decision-making procedures, around which actors’ expectations and behaviour converge in a given area of International Relations (IR). Actors of the IPR include states, Non-State Armed Groups that are belligerents in conflict, humanitarian protection actors and human rights actors, and to a lesser extent, the general public. Humanitarians have a specific role as ‘protection guardians’ as their responsibility lies with convincing parties to a conflict to respect protective measures and provide protection to civilians in need. This therefore justifies an in-depth focus on humanitarian protection actors – while interactions, interdependences and links among all actors are cautiously considered within the research.At the turn of the XXI century, the supplanting of grounded humanitarian protection practices with New Technologies of Information (NTIs) has not been without both ethical and technical challenges and dilemmas. For example, the traditional humanitarian principle of Do No Harm, which requires humanitarian actors to strive to minimize the harm they may inadvertently cause by their presence or through their activities, has been challenged by new ‘digital paradoxes.’ Grappling with one such ethical dilemma while working as a protection practitioner triggered the original incentive to pursue this research. This research therefore explores how the role of NTIs affects both the politics and practice of the International Protection Regime (IPR) supporting civilians in conflict. The study links academic theory to humanitarian practice and views in order to substantiate and nourish the reflection. The research includes interviews with over 30 humanitarian professionals from five humanitarian organisations (ICRC, UNHCR, UN OCHA, NRC and DRC) and from three different categories of expertise: (1) Protection, (2) Information Management/Information Technology, and (3) Senior management/Policy and Innovation staff. The research has for its objective to raise and respond to some of the fundamental questions that are raised by the integration of New Technologies of Information (digital tools) into the International Protection Regime.The findings point to an over-reliance on quantitative digital tools challenge traditional protection approaches and clouds the moral compass of protection professionals. Yet, if an appropriate balance has not yet been found, it is nonetheless sought. The combination of field expertise and humanitarian diplomatic skills have allowed protection guardians to play a role - consciously though cautiously – in renegotiating the terms of the IPR. The extrapolation of existing protective principles, norms, rules and procedures from the physical and psychological towards the digital dimension of the civilian body is underway. While both the parameters and perimeter of the IPR are being refined and renegotiated to accommodate NTIs, no global governance has yet been substantially designed, discussed and agreed upon. Current and future norm developments will likely further take shape through soft agreements based on multi-stakeholder participation; however, the risk that decentralised or contradicting developments of new norms main undermine the IPR is significant. Therefore, sustained academic research and policy reflection are required to enable humanitarians to work effectively and ethically, and to shed light digital intricacies that are part of the complexity of contemporary conflicts.