Profiles
Gabrielle Berman
Senior Advisor - Ethics in Evidence Generation
Gabrielle Berman is responsible for providing advisory and technical support to ensure the highest ethical standards within UNICEF’s research, evaluation and data collection and analysis programmes globally. Her role includes the development of relevant guidance and resources and advocating for ethical practices for evidence generation involving children in different contexts, for different cohorts and utilizing existing, new and emerging technologies. Prior to this role she has worked as a consultant to UN Agencies, Governments and NGO’s providing research, policy and programming advice on a range of issues including ICT and young people in developing countries, human rights, migrant health and homelessness. Her professional experience includes working as a strategic consultant and senior policy advisor in Government and Academia. She has undertaken 3 post-doctoral fellowships in the areas of not-for-profit economics, social policy and population health.
Publications
Publication
Encryption, Privacy and Children’s Right to Protection from Harm
This working paper provides a short overview of the challenges and opportunities related to child protection and the use of encryption technology. While it does not constitute the UNICEF organizational position on the topic, it is meant to inform UNICEF on the issue and to reach and engage professionals, including nonexperts, within and between the child rights and privacy rights sectors.
This paper will provide an overview of the debate around encryption and its possible impact on children’s right to protection from harm. It also reflects on the pros and cons of some proposed solutions.
Publication
Digital Contact Tracing and Surveillance During COVID-19. General and child-specific ethical issues
The response to the pandemic has seen an unprecedented rapid scaling up of technologies to support digital contact tracing and surveillance.This working paper explores the implications for privacy as the linking of datasets: increases the likelihood that children will be identifiable; increases the opportunity for (sensitive) data profiling; and frequently involves making data available to a broader set of users or data managers.
Publication
Digital Contact Tracing and Surveillance During COVID-19: General and child-specific ethical issues
The response to COVID-19 has seen an unprecedented rapid scaling up of technologies to support digital contact tracing and surveillance. This means that we need to establish clear governance processes for these tools and the data collection process and engage with a broader set of government and industry partners to ensure that children’s rights are not overlooked.
Publication
Ethical Considerations for Evidence Generation Involving Children on the COVID-19 Pandemic
This paper identifies key ethical considerations when undertaking evidence generation involving children during the mitigation stage of the pandemic (emergency phase), on subject matter relating to COVID-19 once the pandemic has been contained, and once containment policy measures, including lockdowns, have been lifted (post-emergency phase).
While the COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly a global crisis, with evidence generation activities raising critical ethical issues that have been captured in the literature and relevant guidelines, there are specificities relating to this emergency that must be considered when unpacking potential ethical issues.
Hence while ethical issues pertaining to evidence generation involving children in emergencies and humanitarian contexts are relevant and should be considered, there are factors that define this ‘special case’ that must be considered from the outset. These will inform the core ethical considerations that need to be addressed.
Blogs
Blog
Ethical collection of data from children during the COVID-19 pandemic
Our need to understand, quantify, forecast, track and unpack the COVID-19 pandemic fuels an insatiable need for data. We need to ensure that this quickly doesn’t overshadow the basic principle of “do no harm.” We need to do so with a critical lens on our belief that we will do good through the data collection.
Blog
New Technologies: Rich Source of Data or Ethical Minefield for Researchers?
Social media and geospatial technology offer access to huge amounts of data, but vast ethical implications are often ignored. In this blog post the author highlights advantages and risks of using these technologies to gather data about children. She also provide useful guidance for researchers – especially those unfamiliar with technology – on the questions they should be asking in order to protect children’s rights.
Blog
Big Data, Ethics and Children
In a matter of years the recording of a child or young person’s activities within the public sphere has gone from being consequent to an act of god (or heroics) to a relatively ubiquitous phenomena, slowly conquering continents, and reflected in the statistical estimate that 1 in 3 children now access the internet globally.
Events
Event
Ethics in Humanitarian Research: A Practical Discussion
20 MAY 2020 - Join us for a lively discussion on ethical reviews for humanitarian research and monitoring.
Event
Safeguarding and Ethics in Evidence Generation
27 April 2020 - This webinar will connect issues relating to child safeguarding with those relating to ethics in evidence generation. It will underline key considerations in evidence generation and the planning and clearance process.
Event
Ethics, data & technologies in evidence generation
11 September 2019 - Reflecting on the use of social media and geospatial technologies in evidence generation, UNICEF Innocenti's expert on ethics in evidence generation, Gabrielle Berman, contributed to UNICEF's Webinar on Ethics, Data and Technologies held on September 11 2019.
Podcasts
Podcast
Gabrielle Berman on ethical research on children in humanitarian situations