An Intersectional Approach to Digital Humanitarianism
Three lessons from Lebanon
More than seventy percent of Lebanese residents live below the poverty line. The country has the highest number of refugees per capita in the world and one of the UN’s biggest cash assistance programs. Needs of vulnerable populations continue to grow and aid practitioners continue to burn out in a context of overlapping crises, limited funding, and politicized and chaotically organized humanitarian systems. In an increasingly globalized technosocial ecosystem, humanitarians use data collection, automation, and technologies to respond and adapt. Iris scans register and verify identity, online data platforms harmonize data collection and reporting, vulnerability assessments are expedited via algorithms, and digital bank cards enable beneficiaries to make purchases based on their specific needs. But these interventions leave much to be desired.
When I conducted fieldwork in Lebanon in September and October 2019, I was struck by the incredibly diverse experiences of refugees, especially along the lines of class, gender, age, disability, nationality, race, education, citizenship status, and residence location. Yet such multiplicity, and its implications, are not reflected in the standardized roll out of cash-based aid technologies. While important strides have been taken to address unique experiences of precarity — such as identity-specific grants like cash for those with disability and targeted vulnerability criteria like female-headed households — the approach has been by and large to ‘add inequity and stir.’ Digital cash interventions still operate in ways that treat all recipients the same: As able-bodied, literate, and unmarked by gender, race, and nationhood.
As feminist scholars have long highlighted, structures of oppression fundamentally interlock. Categories of marginalization — on the basis of age, class, race, etc. — interrelate and combine to exacerbate experiences of inequity. This means recipients with intersecting vulnerabilities require tailored responses to meet their unique needs; otherwise, digitized aid can add further challenges. In adopting an intersectional sensibility — one that addresses local dynamics and the broader context of marginalization — humanitarians’ interventions are more likely to be equitable and thus effective.
Three stories from my time in Lebanon illustrate this vividly.
Literacy is essential, but not universal
I purchased items from a group of refugee women who were selling hand-made goods like purses, totes, door stops, and blankets. When handing over the cash, I asked if the amount was correct, as I was unfamiliar with Lebanese currency. But the women did not know how to count the money themselves; they asked me to count it for them.
This story points to important lessons about literacy and banking skills. In Lebanon, there are over 500 WFP-contracted shops where refugees can use their bank cards to purchase items. But to understand product descriptions, prices, and receipts, an aid recipient must be able to read. Thus, illiteracy leads to a significant power imbalance: some refugees are reliant on third parties, such as shop owners, to convey basic information about what they are buying, and must trust that they do so truthfully. For their part, shop owners have taken advantage of refugee illiteracy by over-charging for products and understating a customer’s remaining card balance, so they can pocket the leftover money. Migrant status, gender, and disability further exacerbate these inequities: Literacy rates are lower amongst refugees, especially women, and refugees with disabilities (especially girls) are disproportionately excluded from accessing education. CAMEALEON and CaLP also found evidence of shop workers keeping refugees’ banking cards, an action that is surely facilitated by pervasive anti-refugee sentiment and refugees’ precarious migration status, which stifles reporting to authorities. These intersectional dynamics not only reinforce dependency, but are opportunities ripe for exploitation.
Regulation has been central to mitigating such risks, as the WFP monitors shops to deter exploitative behavior and to collect evidence of recipients’ needs. Indeed, the mindful adoption of humanitarian technologies should always emphasize regulatory efforts to alleviate issues and adapt to specific contexts. Yet on its own, monitoring will not assuage the structural inequities embedded in digital cash cards.
Transportation is required, but not equally accessible
I had to travel from El Aamilyeh to Mar Mikhael, a short and seemingly unchallenging commute. I asked Lebanese friends how to take the bus, but they convinced me to take a taxi instead. After a flood of stories about how public transport is unsafe for women, especially those traveling alone, I asked refugees and migrants about their own travel experiences around the nation. Many women recounted how time-consuming these trips are, their frustrations at their cost, and their not uncommon experiences of being uncomfortable and harassed on public transport.
Refugees must visit WFP-UNHCR validation centers to authenticate their identity, which they are typically required to do quarterly to remain eligible for aid. Many refugees do not own cars, so they must rely on public transport. Public transportation is also essential for commuting to WFP-contracted shops, to access ATMs to withdraw cash, and to access third-party financial service providers. With power outages having left many ATMs inoperative — and the number of ATMs available to refugees having shrunk significantly when the economic crisis compelled the Banque Libano-Française, the bank contracted to work with the UN on cash transfers, to limit services to its own clients — commute distances have grown even farther for some.
As my story and my research indicate, commuting and taking public transport present specific challenges for certain groups of refugees. There is a major risk of harassment on public transport, particularly for women and girls. Race and class make refugee and Black women more vulnerable to maltreatment on public transport, and compared to Lebanese women they are less likely to have someone intervene or offer a helping hand. Those with care responsibilities likely find it more difficult to commute for aid, especially women who live alone, and/or have household and child-rearing duties. Aid recipients living in rural areas such as Beqaa Valley and villages are required to travel even longer distances to banking sites, which sometimes forces them to take time off work — a compromise that many cannot afford. The elderly and people with disabilities have challenges getting to and using public transport. Security checkpoints present specific concerns for refugees (among them are arrest, questioning, and detention), and government-enforced COVID restrictions for refugees, like curfews, limit their mobility. Finally, as costs of public transport rise due to fuel shortages, those in extreme poverty — the majority of refugees — find it increasingly difficult to afford long and frequent commutes.
Thus, financial, bodily, emotional, and security challenges are amplified by intersectional inequities — but those who mandate travel for accessing digitized aid are not reckoning with this reality. The mindful appropriation of humanitarian technology should question the assumptions behind, and additional labour attached to, digitized interventions: Is it really necessary to require quarterly visits to validation sites? What infrastructure is taken for granted? How can we better alleviate the burdens attached to digitized aid in ways that acknowledge intersecting vulnerabilities?
Photo identification is taken for granted as a necessity, but it’s unwanted for some
In some Arab cultures women are discouraged from having their pictures taken. I learned this very quickly when volunteering with an NGO outside of Beirut that provides education and recreational activities to Syrian refugee children. After making “cootie catchers” and taking a quick break for manoushe, the kids were given supplies to draw what makes them happy. Incredibly excited and proud of their masterpieces, boys lined up to have pictures taken with their art. It was a different story for most girls. They wanted a picture of the drawing only if it covered their face.
As a requisite of registering with the UNHCR, recipients are required to have a photo of their face taken. These headshots also streamline cash assistance pick-up; triangulated alongside identity documents, like a driver’s license, and biometric data, photos are used to quickly verify the individual. Photo documentation for identification can thus be culturally insensitive and confrontational, raising questions about how to respect gendered and cultural norms in identification practices. Protocols like the UNHCR’s, which characterize recipients as homogenous across nationalities, cultures, and genders, could put them at risk of community or family backlash, and do not foster the conditions for fully autonomous consent.
Toward an intersectional sensibility
To entrench inequities like those I’ve described here runs contrary to digitized aid’s purported benefits of enhancing empowerment and dignity. Yet because technological interventions are standardized, they struggle with “exceptional” cases, recipients whom diverge from the presumed “norm.” As an aid practitioner in an interview told me: “I think the responsibility of an organization like UNHCR and my responsibility is to make sure we don’t leave anyone behind… We still need to make sure that all the people who need their assistance can be equally reached and supported… We need to assist those people who have specific difficulties and vulnerabilities. We need adjusted processes…”
Such “adjusted processes” might mean cash over the counter, a contingency plan shared by several practitioners in the country. It might entail altering data collection mandates, such as not requiring ID to access assistance. It may involve changing the design of technology and creating a bigger role for UX design, like changing ATM interfaces to include more pictures than words. It could also entail further investing in adjacent welfare programming that makes digital interventions easier to use, and more importantly, helps alleviate structural inequities that give way to inequities in accessing digital aid, like education and employment support. While such options are likely to conflict with donor requests for cost-savings and innovation, they will be more helpful and impactful to the communities in question — and after all, isn’t that the point?
Jenna Imad Harb is a PhD candidate and member of the Justice and Technoscience Lab in the ANU School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet). She has published in areas of protest surveillance, policing technologies, anti-sexual violence technologies and data protection, and financialized welfare surveillance and regulation. Her dissertation examines how social assistance and humanitarian systems in Lebanon adapt to ongoing crises, paying particular attention to digitization and social inequality.
