A/70/335 53. In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, where a strong and thorough framework for the collection of ethnic data has been long established, the code of practice for national statistics under the Census Act provides that national statistics should only be used for statistical purposes and the data kept in secure locations. Access to that data must be granted by the Information Commissioner, the independent authority responsible for monitoring application of the Data Protection Act, who should ascertain that the data will be used exclusively for justifiable research. In the event that information identifying individuals must be released by law, it will be contingent on the explicit direction and personal responsibility of the National Statistician. 13 54. With regard to privacy, the Special Rapporteur stresses that ethnically disaggregated data should always be collected with the explicit consent of the individuals concerned and contingent upon the existence of strong data protection regulations and privacy guarantees in the national legal framework. The right to privacy, from which the principle of individual autonomy can be derived, has also been closely linked to the right of individuals to self-identification, which is another precondition for collecting data. 2. Self-identification 55. In its general recommendation No. 8 (1990) concerning the interpretation and application of article 1, paragraphs 1 and 4, of the Convention, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reasserted self-identification as a pillar of the collection of ethnically disaggregated data. Self -identification is inscribed within the right of individuals to assert their own identity. Indeed, while disaggregation by criteria such as sex, age, income and socioeconomic status may be established with more or less ease, disaggregation by ethnicity is ch allenging, because the identification of ethnic groups involves both objective (e.g., language) and subjective (e.g., sense of belonging) criteria, which are continuously evolving. 14 56. Broadly defined, ethnicity is based on a shared understanding of histo ry and territorial origins (regional and national) of an ethnic group or community and on particular cultural characteristics, such as language and/or religion. Understanding or views about ethnicity, awareness of family background, the number of generations that have been in a country and the length of time since immigration are all possible factors affecting the reporting of ethnicity in a census. Ethnicity is multidimensional and more a process than a static concept; therefore ethnic classification should be treated with movable boundaries. 15 The principle of selfidentification, therefore, addresses the related concern of how ethnic categories should be determined and on what basis should individuals be classified. 57. The Special Rapporteur is of the view that it would be arbitrary to categorize individuals automatically, based on an assumption or perception of the agent collecting the data, which could easily equate to stigmatization and prejudice. Information on ethnicity should always be acquired through self-declaration of the __________________ 13 14 15 16/24 See University of Essex Human Rights Centre Clinic, “Disaggregated data and human rights: law, policy and practice” (2013). See Olivier De Schutter and Julie Ringelheim, “ Ethnic Monitoring. The Processing of Racial and Ethnic Data in Anti-discrimination Policies: Reconciling the Promotion of Equality with Privacy Rights,” (Brussels, Bruylant, 2010). Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses , revision 2. 15-14106