Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that ”No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”
Mothers, especially those in very remote areas have no control over their data and that of their children, their personal data can be accessed by state and non-state actors without consent. With proper legal and institutional frameworks in place, this can be changed to give mothers control over that data.
By enabling data protection laws that protect user’s data from misuse and has transparency over who has access, then mothers can be empowered to opt in when whenever their data is accessed. With proper mechanisms in place to ensure that a user is notified in cases where data is accessed by the state and the oversight authority has to notify the user on why data was accessed within a fourteen days’ timeframe or face legal consequences.