The Inter-American Juridical Comittee’s (CJI) co-rapporteur for personal data protection, Dr. Mariana Salazar Albornoz, participated this past Tuesday, January 28 in the event “The digital revolution of our time: an opportunity for the global economy? (La revolución digital de nuestra era: ¿una oportunidad para la economía global?) organized by Mexico’s National Institute for Transparency, Access to Public Information and Data Protection (Instituto Nacional de Transparencia, Acceso a la Información y Protección de Datos Personales - INAI) as a forum to reflect on the challenges and opportunities in matters of personal data protection faced by the public and private sectors while promoting the growth of an inclusive digital economy in the midst of the digital revolution and the appearance of new technologies.

During this day dedicated to the commemoration of the International Privacy Day, Dr. Salazar shared the stage with experts such as Lina Ornelas Núñez, Chief of Public Policy and Government Relations in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean for Google; Hugo Rodríguez Nicolat, Director of Public Policy for Twitter Latin America; Mariana Mureddu Gilabert, Magistrate at Mexico’s Federal Administrative Court; and Alejandro Lastra, Legal Director at Conekta.

Throughout her intervention, the co-rapporteur gave an overview of the CJI’s work in this field, highlighting the Principles on Privacy and the Protection of Personal Data adopted in 2012 and revised in 2015, as well as the mandate given in 2018 from the General Assembly of the OAS to the CJI to “begin updating the Principles on Protection of Personal Data, bearing in mind how such data have evolved.”

In this regard, she informed that the CJI has continued to work with its Technical Secretariat, the Department of International Law of the OAS, to identify the areas in which these should be updated to reflect the best and most recent developments in international practice, in harmony with the standards adopted by the Member States of the Ibero-American Network for Data Protection (Red Iberoamericana de Protección de Datos).

Dr. Salazar, who was elected together with Dr. Milenko Bertrand Galindo as co-rapporteur for this topic in June 2019, referred to the relevance for the CJI of topics related to the digital revolution we are experiencing, as well as of the inextricable relation between the protection of personal data and human rights.

Next, Commissioner Patricia Kurczyn Villalobos spoke of the important work that the OAS and the INAI have been doing together over the years in the areas of Access to public information and the protection of personal data, highlighting that cooperation between governments and international organizations is key to continue to make consistent progress in the protection and guarantee of these rights which are fundamental in modern life.