Debates are ongoing on the limits of – and possibilities for – sovereignty in the digital era. While most observers spotlight the implications of the Internet, cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence/machine learning and advanced data analytics for the sovereignty of nation states, a critical yet under examined question concerns what digital innovations mean for authority, power and control in the humanitarian sphere in which different rules, values and expectations are thought to apply. This forum brings together practitioners and scholars to explore both conceptually and empirically how digitisation and datafication in aid are (re)shaping notions of sovereign power in humanitarian space. The forum’s contributors challenge established understandings of sovereignty in new forms of digital humanitarian action. Among other focus areas, the forum draws attention to how cyber dependencies threaten international humanitarian organisations’ purported digital sovereignty. It also contests the potential of technologies like blockchain to revolutionise notions of sovereignty in humanitarian assistance and hypothesises about the ineluctable parasitic qualities of humanitarian technology. The forum concludes by proposing that digital technologies deployed in migration contexts might be understood as ‘sovereignty experiments’. We invite readers from scholarly, policy and practitioner communities alike to engage closely with these critical perspectives on digitisation and sovereignty in humanitarian space.

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This paper introduces the notion of legal tech solutionism and argues for how in an age where the development of legal tech is seen as a panacea for all ills it is important to evaluate the use and lifecycle of the technology before introducing it as a solution to the complex and structural problems that plague legal systems. It explores the framework of legal design and argues that legal design provides for a grounded and contextual approach to the development of legal products, content and services. To do this, the paper develops an approach that operates at three levels, including the value of building for usability, the importance of collaboration and community and the value of designing for many worlds to ensure an engagement with a plurality of contexts in the development of legal tech through evolving a grounded approach.

Establishing human rights benchmarks for a rigorous engagement with informal justice systems and plural legal orders has become a significant concern for the United Nations. Through resolutions of the General Assembly, attention has been drawn to ensuring that legal systems reflect cultural diversity and within the domain, especially of indigenous peoples’ rights, importance has been placed on securing and recognizing these distinct legal, socio-political, and cultural institutions because of their role as viable, accessible, affordable, and culturally relevant forms of dispute resolution. The UN Human Rights Committee has also observed that there should be interaction and reconciliation between formal and informal justice systems. This determination to engage with informal justice systems has also extended to the work of UN agencies such as UNDP, UN Women, and UNICEF who recognize that rule of law promotion must be responsive to the realities of countries where reform is to be undertaken, and should be carried out by focusing on developing bottom up approaches to reform. This paper responds to the increasing engagement with informal justice systems and a global audit culture by proposing a framework for evaluation that is reflective of these realities.

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