International Organizations and AI-Supported Humanitarian Aid: Navigating through the Applicable (Data Protection) Legal Regimes

The increasing reliance of international humanitarian organisations on artificial intelligence (AI) to fulfil their mandates gives rise to a number of legal issues, including those pertaining to data protection and the role of individual consent. By focusing on the law and practice of the World Food Programme (WFP) this paper makes a twofold contribution. First, it argues that the enforcement of relevant national and regional data protection and AI legal regimes in relation to the work of international humanitarian organizations is generally precluded by the immunities to which they are entitled under international law. It is therefore the internal regimes of these organisations that provide the most relevant legal framework governing the use of AI and subsequent data gathering. Second, this paper demonstrates that, rather than focusing on the notion of consent, humanitarian organisations should prioritise the incorporation of robust safeguards for data protection and the responsible use of AI into their respective internal regimes.