Refugee rights are cosmological, binding, blended, co-dependent, and interconnected and constitute the basic structure of international custom [BASIC] encapsulating the national jurisdictions across the world. BASIC thrives on dignity; therefore, the word “refugee rights” can be delineated and defined in a single word–as per my understanding–called “dignity,” as it is the issue of human dignity that we address in refugee rights. Therefore, refugee rights mean dignity, but the same has been further convoluted with the ascendance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has presented new challenges to human equality in all walks of life. AI has reduced humanity in algorithmic calculations contrary to global human rights norms. AI does not recognize the significance of humanitarianism in its current form. It has envisioned a world of dynamic numerals that do not protect humanity and mitigate human sufferings in the Refugee Status Determination (RSD) procedures. Algorithmic humanitarianism is an idea suffering from the mechanical, technocratic, and scientific acclimatization of human existence devoid of ethics, justice, and morality. Machine-controlled calculations exclusively adjudicate the RSD procedures and immigration decisions. But the application of AI has also raised a host of issues relating to the data privacy, confidentiality, and use and misuse of data information collected by the governments, organizations, RSD officials, and immigration authorities from the refugees and asylum-seekers migrants, and stateless (RAMS). Such data may be exploited, employed, and maneuvered for geostrategic, geopolitical, geo-engineering, medico-research, socio-economic, and demographical purposes by the global, regional, and domestic institutions and governments. In human rights protection, refugee rights, and immigration decisions, AI has been adversely impacting RSD procedures and immigration judgments across the world.

Algorithmic Humanitarianism

Therefore, algorithmic humanitarianism has presented a compendium of questions than answers. Hence, AI lacks anthropogenic sensitivity, critical thinking, human subjectivity, and objectivity thresholds needed to appreciate the degrees of persecution and discrimination in RSD procedures and immigration decisions in violation of global human rights norms of refugee protection. Thus, there is a need to rummage and ruminate upon these issues by examining AI’s application and assessing the impact thereof on the global human rights norms that sustain humanity and make human existence humane beyond the insight of algorithmic intelligence and discernment. There has to be a human-centric primacy of AI application while positioning refugee equalizers in the ADM Technologies Framework (ATF) for RSD Procedures viz-a-viz international human rights law (IHRL) challenges with the human rights-based approach (HRBA). Further, the equality framework of AI must constitute and advocate that algorithmic humanitarianism must be reprogrammed with new AI technologies impregnated with global human rights norms for sustainable artificial intelligence.

Peremptory acceptance of AI technologies and greater dependence upon AI by both national governments and the private sector and actors have led to growing apprehension regarding the potential adverse repercussions for the core principles of democratic societies like human dignity in diversity, ethical governance, democratic transparency, multicultural accountability, and pluralistic inclusivism. Therefore, there is an indispensable requirement for a framework of global governance to address the full range of societal challenges concomitant with AI inter-alia intimidations to the right to privacy, the right to access to information, the right to equal protection of the law, and the right to non-discrimination during immigration and repositioning of refugees consistent with the existing global human rights framework. Because the emergence of AI is a reality and it has penetrated in the universal institutional life of nation-states, also providing an opportunity for the human mind to utilize it in a manner that conforms and complements global human rights norms while taking into account the Limits of AI Reception, Laxities of AI Recantation, & Luxuries of AI Repercussion. In the future, artificial intelligence technologies might well substitute humans in the workplace altogether. But at least for the foreseeable future, businesses will derive far more value using AI to augment and enhance existing capabilities than automate away human jobs. All nation-states should establish an independent, empowered body to address all aspects of management and review for all types of ADM technologies employed by the national governments worldwide and put all existing and future AI models in the public domain for their scrutiny.

AI and Refugee Rights Equalizers

The free expression of ideas and opinions, freedom of association, the right to privacy and the right to access to information are digital equalizers for refugee rights in an age of AI propounded and protected within the ambit of IHRL framework such as Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights-1966 (ICCPR), UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights-1966 (ICESCR) along with Sub-international Human Rights instruments like AU’s African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. But, unfortunately, these rights have become the pawns of online state surveillance and transgressions facilitated by the gigantic deployment of AI technologies. States have been using AI software against refugee rights defenders, peace activists, human rights journalists, civil society advocates, etc. The speed of technological development empowers individuals globally to utilize novel models of information and communication technologies to elevate the capability of governance structures, commercial establishments and civil society individuals to embark on data surveillance, collection, and an interception. Such steps in a digital age allow the circumvention and abuse of human rights enunciated in Article 12 of the UDHR and Article 17 of the ICCPR that have put a question mark on the future of the right to privacy of individuals, the rights of women, the rights of children, and the rights RAMS.

Moreover, the digital rights and the right to privacy prompted by AI technologies application become more sensitive in the case of the RAMS, particularly if the impact of AI might lead to the detention and deportation of RAMS to their homelands which might put their life at persecution. AI technologies have posed legal, ethical, and social implications for the international community of nation-states to deliberate upon positioning the potential refugee equalizers in the ADM technologies framework for RSD procedures. However, the impact of AI on RAMS and protection regime underscores the risks that AI, algorithms, machine learning, and related technologies may pose to the rights of RAMS, also acknowledging the openings AI technologies offer to augment the accessibility of the rights envisioned in the UDHR and UNCSR. But few questions remain to be answered: What are the positive and negative impacts, risks, and threats of AI technologies for RAMS and their protection rights? What is the legal framework that guarantees RAMS to have access to the Internet and Digital Rights? How does the current legal framework protect the rights of RAMS to access the Internet and their online privacy rights? How can AI enhance the welfare of the RAMS? How could AI make sure RAMS’ access to education? How could AI ethics and policies protect and accommodate RAMS’ rights and mitigate the risks they might face? And what are the predicaments that AI could be abused to circumvent internationally granted rights of RAMS?

The geopolitical ramifications make the challenges associated with Internet sensitive that paved the way for enhanced censorship on social media and other OTT platforms. By banning the websites or resorting to state censorship, the biggest casualty is free speech and privacy. Under such state censorship, online human rights defenders face prosecution and endure persecution at the same time. Unfortunately, IRL instruments do not envisage any reference to the digital or information rights of refugees. However, AI has massive potential to uphold and promote the rights of RAMS; conversely, it can also suppress them. For example, facial recognition technology can be impregnated with AI software to pinpoint and target the RAMS who challenge the repressive asylum regime in host countries and oppose the regime in their countries of origin. AI prognostic propensities might be subject RAMS to arbitrary detention and deportation.

IHRL Obligations

All nation-states must create a special task force (STF) to convene and assemble all ADM scientists & developers, national policy-makers, crucial stakeholders, prominent civil society institutions, educational institutions, and non-governmental organizations to adequately appreciate the actual and potential impacts of ADM technologies on global human right norms. Such steps would lay down the foundations for ethical, moral, and value-oriented dimensions to AI and its application while preserving human rights in RSD and immigration decisions. International refugee law and immigration is a realistic prism that provides a methodology to assess state practices, border control security apparatus and checking measures, global migration governance regime, worldwide criminalization of migration, and surging xenophobia. The RSD and immigration law operate at the intersection of municipal and international law and ensnares global human rights norms and international law. In Genesis, “And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and overall the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Therefore, in the current world order, nation-states have a constitutional scheme to respect international human rights obligations, internet governance with algorithmic transparency in the wake of invoking ADM technologies and their utilization.

ADM Companies and Beyond

Thus, most ADM companies contend with working independently without coordination and collaboration of their initiatives and productivities. It is incumbent upon the UN to lead and bring these companies to one platform while calibrating and coordinating their endeavours in confronting the challenges posed by AI governance. These ADM technology companies must work collectively to ensure that human rights are firmly entrenched in developing, designing, and deploying AI systems worldwide. As ADM technologies evolve and develop, innovative AI governance models have also become crucial for centrally positioning human rights obligations in the AI governance’s operational trajectory. However, it is aptly impressive that all stakeholders and parties privy to the development, employment, and management of ADM technologies must have holistic and critical scrutiny of the actual impacts of AI application and its implications and repercussions on humanity.

Besides regulation, public procurement and standardization should also include human rights principles and rules, thus shaping AI’s future. Public bodies and authorities should require that suppliers respect human rights while designing, developing, and deploying AI technologies that they intend to supply. Finally, AI protocols should be based on technical standards incorporating human rights rules and principles. These standards should be set forth by a collective body with global reach and representing the different sectors of society, including industry, states, civil society, international organizations, and academia.