ABSTRACT
This chapter reports on empirical research into how the emergence of data protection legislation can transform the relationship between aid providers and recipients in humanitarian settings. Exercising data subject rights could further empower the recipients of aid to exercise more control over their personal data, including restricting processing by data controllers (aid agencies), thus significantly altering the positionality of the parties involved in humanitarian aid. The possibility of withdrawing data from processing and an awareness of control over one's own data could amount to indirectly introducing and enforcing accountability mechanisms in humanitarian aid. The authors draw on multiple data sources to analyse how affected individuals in Ukraine have made use of their data subject rights. The chapter concludes by presenting the factors motivating individuals to exercise their data subject rights in the humanitarian setting analysed and outlining further research avenues, emphasising the need for humanitarian actors to prepare for operations in a highly variegated and rapidly changing global legal landscape.
