27-01-2025
CNDH Calls for More Regulations to Tackle Data Privacy Breaches
Amina Bouayach, President of the National Human Rights Council (CNDH), has emphasized the institution's commitment to preserving personal data protection as Morocco scales up its digitization efforts to rise to the challenges of the digital era.
Bouayach made her remarks while taking part in the Personal Data Protection and Respect for Private Life Week. The National Commission for the Protection of Personal Data organized the event today to commemorate the International Day for Personal Data Protection, which is celebrated every year on January 28.
Protecting personal data is an integral part of the right to privacy and the protection of individuals' private lives, Bouayach stressed in her speech.
'It is one of the main, fundamental rights to preserve the dignity of individuals and protect their basic freedoms,' she said, adding that privacy as a concept is expanded to include the protection of personal data.
For the CNDH President, current and emerging challenges require serious efforts as well as regulations to ensure people's data are secure.
Some of the pressing challenges facing people concerned with the safe archiving of their data include the exploitation of their personal (sometimes intimate) details online without their consent, she explained, stressing that this particularly targets particular groups like women and children.
'This necessitates strengthening the protection against any exploitation, targeting or manipulation,' Bouayach said, calling for the urgency of raising digital literacy and information awareness among ordinary people to acquaint them with techniques that would allow them to ensure more security or protection for their data.
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These challenges come amid a complex situation due to the increasing demand for the use of personal data, Bouayach argued. She stressed: 'In this context, a conflict may sometimes arise between the right to personal data protection and freedom of expression or the right of access to information, especially when the public interest is at the center of the debate.'
The CNDH chief further recalled how similar overlap triggers legal and human rights, stressing that personal data protection represents 'one of the most prominent challenges facing the national system for the protection of human rights in this era.'
Bouayach acknowledged the importance of technologies and platforms as powerful levers for boosting rights and freedoms, but she cautions that they can also pose risks when they are used in a way that violates the right to privacy.
'We certainly need to adopt legal approaches that protect victims and require the media to respect the ethical charter of the journalistic profession, including online journalism,' she said.
The CNDH President notably pledged further efforts and collaboration with national and international institutions to boost trust and advocacy to ensure transparency in technology design and use.
Such collaborative efforts would typically seek to emphasize that 'data processing in these situations should be temporary, voluntary, and goal-oriented, with guarantees that data is deleted once it is no longer needed,' she concluded.
