Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Scholars have identified challenges to protecting individuals from discrimination in contexts where organisations deploy artificial intelligence decision-making processes. While scholarship on 'digital discrimination' is growing, scholars have paid less attention to the impact of the use of artificial intelligence decision-making processes on persons with disabilities. This article posits that while the use of artificial intelligence technology can be beneficial for some purposes, its deployment can also construct a disability. The article demonstrates that the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities can be interpreted in a manner that confers a wide variety of human rights on persons with disabilities in the context when entities deploy artificial intelligence decision-making processes. The article proposes a test for digital discrimination based on disability and shows how it can be incorporated into the treaty through legal interpretation. Thereafter, it moves to developing an analogous general test for digital discrimination under international human rights law, applicable beyond a catalogue of protected characteristics.

In the coronavirus pandemic that has swept the world, the Finnish Government, like many of its peers, has issued policy measures to combat the virus. Many of these measures have been implemented in law, including measures taken under the Emergency Powers Act, or by ministries and regional and local authorities exercising their legal powers. However, some governmental policy measures have been implemented using non-binding guidelines and recommendations. Using border travel recommendations as a case study, this article critically evaluates governmental soft law-making. The debacle over the use of soft law to fight the pandemic in Finland revealed fundamental misunderstandings about the processes and circumstances under which instruments conceived as soft law can be issued, as well as a lack of attention to their effects from a fundamental rights perspective.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a challenge to human rights and human rights law globally. The epidemic itself as well as the measures enacted to contain it continuously affect the enjoyment of internationally protected human rights. Furthermore, populism traditionally thrives on crises which can provide legitimacy to extraordinary politics that consistently have proved to be the anti-thesis to human rights compliance and to checks on the power of the executive. In the case of COVID-19 however, democratic states have been dealing with a genuine crisis and extraordinary policies have been warranted. Despite claims to the contrary, human rights do not present a barrier to decisive action to contain the virus. In fact, this working paper argues the opposite. The paper presents three perspectives on how human rights can act as a guide in the fight against the pandemic. Chapter 1 contrasts human rights-based approaches to fighting the spread with populist or authoritarian approaches. It explains what human rights-based approaches to genuine crises look like, as opposed to approaches with little regard for fundamental rights, providing a reliable way to spot the difference. Chapter 2 engages in a methodological discussion on how reliably to measure human rights compliance and promotion in connection with a global pandemic and conducts a survey of existing guides and trackers. Finally, Chapter 3 presents a method for real-life application of the results of the analysis in Chapter 1 and the discussion in Chapter 2 in the form of an assessment model for human rights protection and promotion during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.