Our team at The MERL Tech Initiative is hosting and participating in a few online sessions at RightsCon 2025. If you’re attending the summit, we’d love to see you there!

Assessing humanitarian AI: what M&E frameworks do humanitarians need in the face of emerging AI?

February 26, 1:15 pm ET / 7:15 pm CET

During this session we’re hosting, we’ll map the current state of M&E of humanitarian AI and the kinds of M&E frameworks necessary to ensure the humanitarian sector is able to effectively assess AI tools. Quito Tsui (Researcher at MTI and Humanitarian AI Working Group Lead) will be joined by Giulio Coppi (Access Now), Helen McElhinney (CDAC), Sarah Spencer, and Linda Raftree (MTI’s Founder) for a conversation that considers the question of AI and M&E in relation to corporate partnerships and mis/alignment of principles, the distancing nature of AI and loss of accountability, the potential for AI to work against the localization agenda, upstream evaluation. We’ll also focus on the role of critical literacy around AI and why it’s especially necessary in the current times. 

Our session will take unintended consequences and the unknown of AI as the collective starting point, drawing on the breadth of knowledge in the room to think about what we don’t know before discussing what we do know. 

Read more about the session here.

Engineering perspectives for equitable data practices in AI

February 26, 3:45 pm ET /  9:45 pm CET

Hosted by IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), this session will bring together experts from the engineering sector, private sector, public sector, and multilateral to discuss how ethically aligned design can help improve AI data practices. 

Linda Raftree (MTI’s Founder) will be one of the speakers on a panel covering real-world experiences and pragmatic approaches that can help mitigate bias, enhance accountability, and create AI systems that can work for all. The panel including Mariela Machado Fantacchiotti (IEEE Humanitarian Technologies & Tech for Good), Brittany Chubbuck (Project Specialist, Humanitarian Technology, IEEE), Joaquin Morixe (Globant Ventures & BeKind Tech Fund-Globant), John C. Havens (IEEE Planet Positive 2030), and Stephanie Mikkelson (Tech-facilitated Gender-based Violence Specialist, UNFPA) will also address how engineering teams, policymakers, civil society organizations and others can work together toward better data practices in AI and responsible innovation.

Read more about the session here.

If you’re interested in participating in these online sessions, don’t forget to register for RightsCon (there’s still time)! Hopefully, we’ll see you there!