ABSTRACT
In armed conflicts and crises, people use every means available to survive, find assistance, and help each other. Mobile phones and access to messaging apps, search engines, and social networks help them find vital information, urgent help, and remain connected with loved ones. But they also spread disinformation, hate messages, and a digital footprint which can be used to spy on, target, harm, and even kill them. General Michael Hayden, former head of the US National Security Agency, once stated, “we kill people based on metadata”. As an ever-growing number of connected people use their smartphones or other devices in unsafe areas to find humanitarian assistance and remotely contact humanitarian organisations, they not only expose themselves, but they are also are confronted with a puzzling number of apps or public web interfaces, providing fragmented, unreliable, and outdated answers to their needs for vital information. In this context, the International Committee of the Red Cross undertook the challenging task of building a trusted, independent, private, and secure-by-design digital humanitarian platform for people affected by armed conflicts and humanitarian crises.
The purpose of this chapter is to share – from a humanitarian practitioner's perspective – a personal and critical account of the challenges faced in building this platform, called RedSafe, with the aim of delivering new digital humanitarian services in dangerous contexts, while mitigating the risks of doing harm to those who need protection.
