This paper investigates the growing concerns surrounding the utilisation of biometric technology within humanitarian organisations, with a specific focus on the Biometric Information Management System (BIMS) operated by UNHCR. The study is based on a literature review in which themes of concern are first identified in theoretical literature followed by an examination of empirical literature (here termed ‘refugee-including literature’) to see if the concerns are shared. The primary aim is to offer a comprehensive understanding of biometric concerns by amalgamating previous research, while at the same time bringing to light the specific concerns voiced directly by refugees themselves. Using Michel Foucault’s biopolitics and Michael Barnett’s humanitarian governance, the findings reveal two overarching themes shared between the theoretical and refugee-including literature: Concerns of Power (agency, data-access, and the testing of new technologies) and Concerns of Policy (function creep, fraud prevention, and technosolutionism). The study also finds that refugee-including literature presents an additional concern not seen in the theoretical literature: limitations on economic agency, while excluding another: concerns about private company data-access. The refugee-including literature is also found to offer some remarks in support of biometric registration. In conclusion, this study not only sheds light on concerns surrounding humanitarian biometrics, it also highlights the distinctive insights provided by refugees themselves. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations aimed at addressing the identified concerns and promoting responsible and ethical use of biometric technology in humanitarian operations.

The impacts and influences of globalised digitalisation has increased its presence within the political structures of both international economic and international security regimes, and the rise of e-governance systems and digital security technology has probed IR scholarship to study this policy shift from traditional forms of governance to digital ones. Less considered here is how digitalisation has been extended to the international humanitarian governance regime. Digital tools are increasingly being produced and employed within international humanitarian interventions. However, despite the rapid mobilisation of these digital technologies, humanitarian crises and their corresponding interventions are becoming more frequent and more prolonged and the assumed benefits of these well-intending digital tools are failing to improve the lives of their beneficiaries. While evaluations of these interventions are not lacking, the preoccupation of material, quantitative assessments of humanitarian missions erroneously neglect the perspectives and experiences of their intended beneficiaries. In this regard, the paper seeks to problematize the methods in which humanitarian practitioners produce and implement their digital aid in a critical study into the political and normative structures which shape the design of digitised humanitarian governance. Post Colonial theory is recalled as a central, anchoring framework from which its concepts of racialisation, hegemonic identity reconstruction, and exploitation will be theory-tested via public policy analysis to the research’s case study. Here, the ‘neutrality’ of humanitarian governance is debunked, and hidden lineages of coloniality within the UNHCR’s mandate in the Rohingya refugee emergency are brought to the fore.