Approaches to Human Rights-Sensitive Design of Digital Applications and Their Implementation in the Context of Complex, Multi-Stage Admission Processes

This interdisciplinary contribution builds on existing research on the method of value- sensitive technology design as well as on existing knowledge on the intersection of human rights, migration and digitization. In doing so, I ask for concrete ways to operationalize the broad and rather fuzzy concept of ‘values’ referring to codified human rights in two specific cases of increasingly digitized administrative action: First, the admission of protection seekers under the German framework of federal humanitarian admission and secondly, the allocation of asylum seekers and refugees within the regular German asylum procedure. I will therefore focus on digitization on two federal levels of action: the federal government in its responsibility for federal humanitarian reception, and the federal states in their responsibility for the allocation of asylum seekers to the municipal level after initial reception. This contribution therefore also aims to fill a gap in research on migration, digitalization, and human rights, which has so far focused primarily on the digitization of the ‘regular’ German asylum procedure as such (eg. Ozkul 2025). By taking a closer look at the Federal admission program for Afghanistan (“Bundesaufnahmeprogramm Afghanistan” (BAP)) and the digitization pilot project “Match’In” which targets an improvement of the current allocation system, I elaborate which concrete development steps can follow from the abstract claim to take human rights seriously in the design process. The contribution concludes with a number of risk mitigating strategies, eg. involving rights-holders and other relevant stakeholders in the design and implementation, transparency and considerations of proportionality in the selection of methods. In doing so, I also address the limits to which this claim may be subject, remaining risks and open up questions for further academic exchange.