Digital Evidence in Refugee Status Determination

Abstract

Digital evidence is now rapidly emerging in refugee status determination (‘RSD’) – the procedure for determining whether a person meets the criteria for protection as a ‘refugee’ under the 1951 Refugee Convention. Its growing popularity among migration authorities may be seen as a response to the relative dearth of “hard” evidence in refugee status determination (RSD) and the repeated critiques of human decision-making in asylum as prone to arbitrariness, subjectivity and bias. RSD transpires under particularly difficult conditions of epistemic uncertainty, where the applicant’s testimony is central, and the risks of misjudgment are profound for both for the applicant who may be sent to harm and the state whom may thereby in violation of international law. However, the efficiency of decision making is not the only way of thinking about the problem. Reimagining evidence practices through digital means may not only help refugees to support their claims but also counter existing epistemic asymmetries whereby the state has also the resources and the refugee has none in RSD.