I recently attended the ICPD30 Global Dialogue on Technology, co-hosted by the Governments of The Bahamas and Luxembourg, and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The two-day event held in June 2024 in New York City marked 30 years since the first International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, Egypt, and the final dialogue before the UN Summit of the Future in September 2024. The ICPD Programme of Action drafted in Cairo set the standard for people-centered development, guiding national policies and programmes for implementation. Learn more about the history of ICPD here.
The dialogue brought together multi-stakeholder participation representing national governments, technology companies, human rights groups, women’s rights organizations, civil society organizations, and academia. Over two days of panel discussions and focused breakout sessions, the group unpacked and studied the role of technology and artificial intelligence (AI) in perpetrating and tackling societal challenges pertaining to gender, health care, education, finance, humanitarian work, and public goods. Specifically, the dialogue prompted reflection on:
You can read more about the dialogue agenda and access the recordings here. This blog covers my learnings and reflections from participating in the dialogue, serving as a provocation and reckoner for young people working in regulating, researching, designing, developing, and deploying technological platforms as well as solutions to address local or global societal challenges.
The digital world does not exist outside of society and, if left unchecked, mirrors the biases, inequities, and injustices that persist and evolve through history. Technology can facilitate online violence (especially gender, minority, and refugee-based), often leaking into persons’ physical, familial, and public spheres. Technology can also propagate misinformation and increase risk of surveillance and control. Furthermore, data and designer biases often seep into its design and deployment, deepening pre-existing societal divisions.
As the digital gets more and more intertwined with society, it is reshaping the way we function – how we communicate, produce, consume, learn, heal, and most importantly, dream. For example, a recent study I co-conducted with UNICEF and UNDP while at Quicksand Design Studio, on gender barriers to entrepreneurship and leadership in South-East Asia, revealed that from a young age, girls’ self perception, confidence, aspirations, learning abilities, and family perceptions are influenced by their experiences online – the success stories visible to them from within and outside their communities and the information and opportunities they could access depended on their access to digital spaces and technologies.
Technology–the scaffolding and window into the digital world–hence holds immense power and should not be put on a pedestal as a force for good without intentional design, checks and balances, and due diligence. It is important to think about:
“AI for good cannot be assumed, we must prove AI for good. I am eager and hungry for use-cases where that is happening.”
To better study the digital world and technology, Tsitsi Matekaire from Equality Now, broke it down into three facets: content, institutions, and culture.
Here, content refers to the material being communicated and consumed over digital platforms; institutions refer to structures of power and control, like regulators, law enforcement, governments, and tech companies; and culture refers to digital societal history, values, norms, and accountability structures in place. These lenses can help understand the true nature and impact of technology and ascertain where change and intentionality is needed.
Given the unavoidable significance of technology, it is essential to intentionally lay down principles that guide the approach to technology throughout its lifecycle: from regulation to research, decision-making, design, deployment, usage, data, feedback, and back to regulation.
To begin laying down these principles, an essential theme peppered through the ICPD30 dialogue was that of gender-based equity and inclusion, necessitating that a gender transformative and gender intentional approach to technology must be a core value of the internet and technological development. The original vision of the ‘web’ was an open and inclusive one based on non-discrimination and bottom-up principles—what could be considered a feminist institution—whereas in reality gender divides in access and experience score every part of the online experience. Men are 21% more likely than women to have access to the internet, with the number going up to 54% in least developed contexts. This gender “digital divide,” along with other barriers including fewer women than men working in technology and lack of data disaggregation by sex and gender, result in pervasive gender biases in the latest artificial intelligence developments, which have negative impacts on women’s psychological, economic, and health security. One example of these negative impacts was documented in a 2020 study of 51 countries, which found that 85% of women overall have witnessed online violence against other women, and 38% of women reported personally experiencing online violence.
These are difficult battles to fight, given gender history and the legacy of societies; active, intentional effort will be needed in how we approach technology.
Given these challenges, a whole-of-society approach to data and technology, focusing on gender equity and human rights can have positive ripple effects across society. Hence, our approach to technology across its lifecycle must be rights-based, meaningful, and resilience-building for progress to be made toward a more democratic, inclusive, and equitable future.
During a panel on “Pioneering Equitable Healthcare R&D” at the ICPD Dialogue, Dr. Laura Ferguson, Research Director at University of Southern California’s Institute for Inequalities in Global Health, shared that rights-based principles ensure platforms are mindful of participation (which voices inspire and engage with the technological cycle), accessibility and acceptability (who is left behind), discrimination (who experiences injustice and marginalization), decision-making (who is empowered and informed), privacy (who is visible, and who controls data and identity), and accountability (who is answerable).
Designing intentionally meaningful platforms and experiences ensures that platforms are safe, satisfying, enriching, easy, collaborative, and affordable. Lastly, ensuring resilience-building strategies to prevent, adapt, and mitigate inequitable and unjust practices across the technology lifecycle is crucial to strike the right balance between technological consideration and technological innovation.
A study I co-conducted for the Gates Foundation while at Quicksand Design Studio focused on pathways to build public health systems resilience in a post-COVID world. The design principles highlighted in the study resonate with the themes that emerged from the ICPD Dialogue, namely that:
Read more about these principles on the Amplifying Resilient Communities (ARC) project website.
Young people have a unique perspective of growing up, first-hand, in a digital world; never knowing a world without technology, they have grown up interacting with digital platforms for socializing, education, health care, financial health, and enjoyment. Having experienced the potential harm and benefits of technology and the digital world, young people need to lead the approach to technological development and innovation to ensure a more equitable, democratic, and inclusive future for generations to come.
Throughout the ICPD Dialogue, efforts were highlighted that embody the principles and learnings in this article. These serve as reminders that in many ways, the future we are striving for–for young people to equitably distribute this future, leaving no one behind, and keeping everyone safe–is already here. Young people, especially young women, hold the key to unlocking the potential of technology. Some of the efforts and alliances highlighted through the two-day dialogue are listed in the table.
Table: Movements toward an equitable, just, and rights-based technological future
In closing, a principled approach to the creation and sustainment of technology is critical in ensuring a just and equitable digital society. The ICPD Dialogue was a call to action for designers, technologists, activists, governments, civil society movements, and young people to lead the charge, preserve the core values of the web, and critically redesign digital systems and institutions. This blog highlights some pathways to do so and serves as a tool for those seeking to make a change.
Aditya Prakash was sponsored by USAID’s PROPEL Youth & Gender Project to attend and participate in the ICPD30 Global Dialogue on Technology. PROPEL Youth & Gender is a five-year USAID-funded project that uses policy, advocacy, health financing, and governance approaches to improve family planning and gender equality outcomes and advance sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for women, men, and gender-diverse individuals. Learn more about the project here.