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The Governance Gap in Humanitarian AI: Addressing the structural gap between global frameworks and operational reality

Year: 2026

Type: report

Abstract: The Governance Gap in Humanitarian AI sets out the structural gap between global AI governance frameworks and the operational reality of deployment in humanitarian and low resource settings. The paper establishes five core points. The governance gap in humanitarian AI is structural and cannot be closed by individual agency policies. Existing frameworks, including the EU AI Act and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, provide important foundations but were built for other operational realities. The central weakness is verification capacity, particularly where organisations rely on systems they cannot independently scrutinise. In a resource-constrained sector, shared assurance infrastructure is needed to reduce duplication and make governance feasible in practice. Uptake will depend on whether governance aligns with incentives across donors, agencies and vendors.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20938214

Authors: McElhinney, Helen, Mazumder, Anjali, Tjalve, Michael

Institution: The Alan Turing Institute

Language: English

Topic: Ethics and Social Impacts of AI

Subfield: Safety Research

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Peace, justice, and strong institutions, Partnerships for the goals, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: green

Funder: Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

OpenAlex ID: W7166136244

Cites: 1

Cited by:

Related to: 10