Guest Lecture: Legal Aid, Humanitarian Action & Emerging Technologies
Guest Lecturer at Fordham Law School
Skills
Team Size
1 person
Guest contributor in Prof. Zaid Hydari’s “Refugee Law and Policy” course at Fordham Law School, leading a discussion on how humanitarian principles and legal ethics can guide the evaluation of technology-driven innovations in sensitive contexts.
The Discussion
With law students studying refugee law and policy, we explored how to critically evaluate technology applications in humanitarian and legal aid settings. The core question: how do we integrate humanitarian principles and the ethical prerogatives of the legal profession when assessing new tools?
Topics Covered
- 1
Humanitarian Principles
How humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence apply to technology decisions.
- 2
Legal Ethics
Professional responsibility considerations when deploying AI in legal aid contexts.
- 3
Case Studies
Real-world examples including AI chatbots, biometric registration, and predictive analytics in refugee settings.
- 4
Evaluation Frameworks
Practical tools for assessing technology risks and benefits in sensitive contexts.
Case Studies
We drew on examples from the rapidly evolving field of AI-powered innovations in the humanitarian sector—including my own work building a legal information chatbot—to illustrate why this sociotechnical perspective matters when lives and legal outcomes are at stake.