Rebooting the Asylum System? The Role of Digital Tools in International Protection
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Highlights
COVID-19 accelerated digital innovation across asylum systems. Six key lenses reveal both the promise and significant risks of using technology in humanitarian protection systems.
- The pandemic shifted authorities' mindset from temporary digital adaptation to deliberate transformation, spurring use of biometrics, chatbots, remote interviews, and artificial intelligence (AI) decision-support tools.
- AI and algorithmic tools offer efficiency and consistency gains but carry serious risks of opaque decision-making, replication of human bias, and erosion of the right to appeal.
- Security-driven digitalization risks mission creep, with tools designed for humanitarian purposes increasingly repurposed to deter arrivals or monitor asylum seekers' movements.
- Continuous goal-setting, cost-benefit analysis, and investment in monitoring and evaluation are essential to ensure digital tools do not restrict access to protection.
The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the way asylum systems use technology. After the initial pause on asylum processing in many countries, officials have turned to digital tools to revive these systems—and increasingly, to reimagine how they work. From the further digitalization of identification and security-check processes to chatbots that help asylum seekers register their protection claims and interviews conducted remotely via video call, such tools have permeated every corner of migration, asylum, and border management systems. This is particularly the case in Europe, where the 2015–16 migration and refugee crisis kickstarted a first round of growth in this area.
With digital tools here to stay, the time is ripe to examine what impact their use has on people and processes, and how digitalization may interact with other developments in the international protection field. This report—part of the Beyond Territorial Asylum: Making Protection Work in a Bordered World initiative led by MPI and the Robert Bosch Stiftung—catalogues the use of digital tools in protection systems in Europe and elsewhere, and reflects on what the ramifications could be for humanitarian protection in the years to come.
“Digitalization in and of itself is no universal cure,” the author writes, “and depending on how such efforts are carried out, they could obstruct the asylum process and violate asylum seekers’ rights as easily as they could facilitate or protect them.” This report highlights both the potential benefits of the increasing use of digital technology in different stages of asylum processes as well as key challenges and risks that need to be addressed, including concerns about data privacy, opaque decision-making, and how technology changes the nature of human communication.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 COVID-19 as a Catalyst for Digitalization in Humanitarian Protection
3 How Digital Tools Are Transforming Asylum Systems
A. Identification
B. Registration
C. Processing of Asylum Claims
D. Decision-Making in Asylum, Migration, and Detention Procedures
E. Early Warning Systems, Forecasting, and Scenario-Building
4 Delivering on the Promise of Digitalization and Mitigating the Risks
A. Generating Efficiency Gains in Workflows, Staffing, and Infrastructure
B. Reducing Arbitrariness in Decision-Making
C. Strengthening Communication between Agencies and with Asylum Applicants
D. Improving Migration and Asylum Intelligence
E. Recognizing Security as a Driver of Digitalization and Addressing the Risk of Mission Creep
F. Running a Humanitarian Protection System Remotely
5 Conclusions
About the Global Program
The Global Program bridges policy advice, research, and candid dialogue to design effective migration policies, drawing on global evidence and anticipating the forces reshaping how people move.
About the Beyond Territorial Asylum Initiative
This MPI-Robert Bosch Stiftung initiative explores innovative approaches to asylum and refugee protection amid growing global pressures.
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