Machine learning in action for the humanitarian sector

Governments across the world came together in Marrakesh this past December to ratify a pact to improve cooperation on international migration. Among other objectives, the Global Compact for Migration seeks to use "accurate and disaggregated data as a basis for evidence-based policies." How can machine learning technologies help with deeply polarizing societal issues like migration? In early 2018, with support from IBM Corporate Citizenship and the Danish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, IBM and the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) embarked on a partnership aimed squarely at the need to better understand migration drivers and evidence-based policy guidance for a range of stakeholders. At the recent THINK Copenhagen keynote, the Secretary General of the DRC, Christian Friis Bach, presented the first results of this effort.