Human Rights Watch (HRW) has expressed significant alarm over the UK’s Home Office proposal to implement facial age estimation (FAE) technology by 2027 to gauge the ages of young asylum seekers. Critics, including HRW and Foxglove, caution that the technology is prone to discriminatory errors, particularly affecting women and people of color, and believe it could set an unsettling global precedent for migration practices. Their concerns are shared in an open letter addressed to the Home Office.
The UK government has argued that FAE will complement rather than replace human decisions within the asylum process. The Home Office claims that immigration officers will continue to employ a “benefit of the doubt” principle, treating individuals as adults only when conclusive consensus is reached based on their appearance and behavior. Should any uncertainties arise, individuals are directed to local authorities for a more comprehensive assessment. However, Martha Dark of Foxglove points out that internal government documents highlight the tools’ frequent misidentifications, particularly for individuals from Sub-Saharan Africa, where racial discrimination issues have been noted. She stresses that asylum-seeking children, who have often endured severe trauma, should not be subjected to such experimental and potentially biased technology.
A study conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) also raises concerns, suggesting that age-estimation algorithms’ efficacy varies across demographic lines, with notably higher error rates for certain groups. Despite the potential for human error reduction, the deployment of FAE remains controversial, with potential social ramifications extending beyond the UK. Critics are urging the UK government to reassess, considering the potential risks of systemic bias and inaccuracies in a process that impacts vulnerable populations’ lives and futures.