On 22 January 2014, Refugees United’s co-founder Christopher Mikkelsen participated in the 7th International Conference on Computers, Privacy and Data Collection in Brussels, Belgium.
Mr. Mikkelsen spoke on a panel with representatives from Google, International Committee for the Red Cross, the Missing Persons Community of Interest, and others. The objective of the panel was to discuss privacy and protection of data in the aftermath of crisis and conflict and how to most efficiently collect, curate and share data to speed up the process of reconnecting separated families.
Following the panel discussion, the Missing Persons Community of Interest – a group of volunteers, companies, nonprofits and humanitarian organizations – convened at the Belgian Red Cross offices to explore the opportunity to further streamline the exchange of data between organizations in a faster and more seamless manner.
The group is currently developing a protocol to enable information sharing across different data systems, thereby making it easier for separated families to reconnect.
