Informed consent
In humanitarian contexts, informed consent is critical.
Crisis-affected people are often in vulnerable situations where they cannot make free decisions for many reasons, including a fear of losing assistance if they say ‘no’. Whether technology is used for data collection, biometric identification, digital cash transfers, or communication, ensuring ethical and meaningful consent is essential to protect people’s rights, dignity, and safety.
Key considerations
When developing consent policies and seeking informed consent
Understand the technology:
Encourage teams to critically examine aspects, identify potential risks, and ensure that consent is based on transparent, accessible, and contextually relevant information.
Understand the people affected by the crisis:
Invites teams to move beyond assumptions, identify who may face additional barriers, and ensure that consent processes are grounded in the lived realities of diverse individuals and groups within a community.
Informed consent is not obtained, it is built!
Communicate
Explain the risks of using the technology being considered, focusing on personal identifiable information.
Validate
Before asking people for their consent, ask questions to check that they truly understand the risks and their rights regarding data, including the right to withdraw their consent.
Record consent
Make the consent process easy and clear, using the right language and graphics or audio where necessary.
Communicating, validating, and recording are all part of the same process of care, transparency, and respect for people's agency.
The dangers of assuming consent
During research for this guide, CLEAR Global heard from community members that they would consent to the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Their main concerns with AI were that they would be unable to use it or that it would replace the need for human work and further exclude many people in vulnerable communities. Most of the people we talked with were unaware of other risks associated with AI, including data protection and privacy issues. Their consent to the use of AI-enabled technology would therefore not be fully informed.
This highlights the point that the process of collecting genuinely informed consent cannot be neglected in favour of other considerations. Aid organisations and their technology partners are responsible for ensuring that individuals are aware of the risks and understand what they consent to.