Hybrid (In-person & Virtual)
18-19 SEPTEMBER 2025
THE RIVERSIDE HOTEL, Duban, SOUTH AFRICA
THEME: BUILDING TRUST, PROTECTION, AND ETHICS IN GLOBAL DATA: TOWARDS IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CAPE TOWN GLOBAL ACTION PLAN FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Trust in the integrity of science is dependent on ethical creation, use, and sharing of data. In response to this critical reality, the Committee on Data (CODATA) of the International Science Council (ISC) established a Working Group in 2021, now Data Ethics Task Group (DETG) committed to steering technology toward benevolence and ensuring its enduring benefits to humanity. The DETG is a global multi-disciplinary data ethics stakeholder with the aim of raising awareness about contemporary data ethics issues. The DETG works towards promoting the UNESCO recommendations on open science sets out the foundations for an international standard for open science, by defining shared values and guiding principles. It also seeks to identify “a set of actions conducive to a fair and equitable operationalization of open science for all at the individual, institutional, national, regional and international levels”. The DETG promotes the notion that Individual, family and community data rights such as for privacy and rights of representation must be respected throughout the research process; and that data distribution must ensure equal access for researchers in every context, including low resourced contexts and recognizing the importance of fostering equitable partnerships, diversity and inclusion among researchers for achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); in particular SDG 16 and SDG 17. The increasing use of computational techniques including Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, by academic researchers demand consideration of data ethics issues that this raises, especially around bias and privacy.
The Global Data Ethics and Governance Symposium will convene a diverse, international group of scholars from across disciplines with interest in data ethics to sensitize and raise awareness about ethical issues among early career and emerging researchers from low and middle-income countries related to building trust, protection and ethics in global data. The symposium will also introduce and launch final versions of policy briefs developed by the DETG in response to the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science and invite wider contributions and engagement around the importance of safeguarding data ethics at the global level.
Sub-themes:
The call for abstracts invited individual paper abstracts and panel proposals under following sub-themes:
- Data Ethics and Scientific Integrity
- Data Privacy
- Data Ethics and Structural Inequities in Science
- Ethics of Indigenous Data Governance
- Ethical Data Stewardship and Data Colonialism
- Data Ethics and Artificial Intelligence
- Data Sovereignty and Intellectual Property Protection.