On Thursday, September 23,
the Department of International Law
(DIL) of the Secretariat for Legal Affairs of
the OAS, and the Inter-American
Institute of Human Rights (IIDH)
jointly held a virtual seminar to
present the Inter-American Juridical Committee’s
(CJI) Updated Principles on Privacy and the
Protection of Personal Data.
This OAS body approved the Updated Principles in
April 2021, fulfilling a mandate from the
General Assembly. The 13 Updated Principles, the
result of a broad consultation process among OAS
Member States and some international
organizations, are enhanced with a set of
annotations that develop and detail their
content.
The event started with a welcome from Dr.
Claudio Grossman, President of the IIDH, who
pointed out that the pandemic we are
experiencing has evidenced the need to protect
personal data; therefore, the sanitary measures
that have been implemented in several States of
the region and that imply the treatment of this
type of data must be proportional, lawful,
justified and limited. He further called on the
General Assembly of the OAS to approve the
Updated Principles of the CJI in its next
session.
For his part, Dr. Dante Negro, Director of the
DIL mentioned that the great challenge is to
achieve a balance between ensuring the
protection of personal data and the flow of this
type of data for legitimate purposes. He also
noted that the CJI seeks to contribute to
achieving that balance, particularly since
privacy is a concern in everyone's daily life.
Next, the rapporteur for protection of personal
data at the CJI, Dr. Mariana Salazar Albornoz
highlighted that the technological acceleration
that the pandemic has produced has not been
proportional to the regulatory advances in the
matter, evidencing a need for minimum standards
that serve to strengthen the protection of
privacy in light of these developments.
Subsequently, she proceeded to succinctly
develop each of the 13 Updated Principles.
Dr. Felipe Rotondo, former president of the
Ibero-American Data Protection Network (RIPD),
shared some reflections on the Updated
Principles vis a vis the Ibero-American
Standards approved by the RIPD itself in 2017.
In this regard, he considered that there is full
compatibility between both instruments,
highlighting that the Updated Principles and
their corresponding annotations are sufficiently
didactic and flexible to remain current in the
face of future technological advances.
Participants had the opportunity to submit
questions to the panelists in a session led by
the event's moderator, Ms. Claudia Barrientos,
OAS representative in Uruguay. Subsequently, Dr.
Eduardo Bertoni, representative of the IIDH’s
Regional Office for South America, highlighted
the value of the consultation process undertaken
by the CJI as part of the preparation of the
Updated Principles since, by incorporating the
contributions of the States Members of the OAS,
its adoption by these same States becomes more
feasible and advisable.
Finally, Dr. Jaime Moreno-Valle, Principal Legal
Officer of the DIL closed the event by
highlighting that the vertiginous development of
technology regarding the collection and
processing of personal data makes it necessary
for the OAS and the CJI in particular to
continue strengthening the set of tools that it
makes available to its Member States, citing as
an example the “Declaration on Neuroscience,
Neurotechnologies and Human Rights: New
Challenges for the Americas” adopted by the CJI
in August 2021, which draws attention to the
need to protect the personal data obtained
through the use of neurotechnologies.
» To read the Updated Principles on Privacy and the Protection of Personal Data,
click here.
»
To visit the event’s web page and view the video
(available in Spanish only),
click here.
»
To visit the DIL’s web page on personal data protection,
click here.