A/HRC/48/Add.xx communities, leading to their exclusion from effective health policies.131 The US recently announced a new app named “CBP One” which uses facial recognition, GPS technology, and cloud storage to collect data on asylum seekers before they enter the US. 132 This technology raises serious privacy and non-discrimination concerns.133 48. States and international organizations,134 have promoted the creation of “immunity” or “health” passports that would condition international travel and mobility on vaccination status. However, because of the unequal distribution of access to vaccines, such requirements will further exacerbate inequality in immigration and mobility opportunities. As vaccines become available, States and international organizations are turning to new technologies to facilitate the mobility of the vaccinated.135 Organizations such as the WHO, International Air Travel Association, the WEF, and Gavi Vaccine Alliance are actively developing digital systems which can track vaccination data and facilitate travel. Private tech companies are also working to provide seamless digital access to vaccination records.136 A report by the IOM and Migration Policy Institute has called for these efforts to be particularly sensitive to pre-existing inequalities which are worsened by digitization, including impacts on “those in vulnerable situations or unable to access the relevant technology.” 137 3 Border externalization 49. Border externalization—the extra-territorialization of national and regional borders to other geographic regions in order to prevent migrant and refugee arrivals—has become a standard border enforcement tool for many countries and regions. The human rights violations associated with border externalization are well documented. 138 Border externalization does not affect all nationality or national origin groups equally. It has a disproportionate impact on persons from Africa, Central and South America and South Asia, and in many regions is fuelled by racialized, xenophobic and ethnonationalist politics that seek to exclude certain national and ethnic groups from regions on discriminatory bases. States and regional blocs have increasingly relied on digital technologies to achieve this border externalization, thereby consolidating and expanding discriminatory, exclusionary regimes. 50. One submission highlighted the European Border Surveillance system (“EUROSUR”) as a program that uses big data technologies “to predict, control and monitor traffic across European Union borders.”139 It deploys surveillance drones in the Mediterranean Sea, in order to notify the Libyan coastguard to intercept refugee and migrant boats and return migrants to Libya. 140 Although the European Commission insists the drones are only for civil surveillance purposes,141 the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (“OHCHR”) has spoken out against coordinated pushbacks and failures to assist migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean, one of the deadliest migration routes in the world.142 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 16 https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/contact-tracing-apps-vulnerable-migrants-key-concerns/. https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-06-04/asylum-bidens-got-an-app-for-that-with-privacyrisks-and-surveillance-beyond-border. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/FOIA/investigating-cbp%E2%80%99s-use-mobileapplication-cbp-one. International Organization for Migration & Migration Policy Institute, “Covid-19 and the State of Global Mobility in 2020” (2021), p. 51. Ibid., pp. 51-2. Ibid. Ibid., p. 52. See, e.g., A/HRC/23/46, A/HRC/29/36 and A/72/335. Maat for Peace, Submission citing Btihaj Ajana, “Augmented borders: Big Data and the ethics of immigration control” (2015). Franciscans International, Submission citing https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190819-euusing-israel-drones-to-track-migrant-boats-in-the-med/. Franciscans International, Submission citing https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-92019-003257-ASW_EN.pdf. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25875&LangID=E.