On November 5, ABLI was invited by the Open Diplomacy Institute to have a private exchange with a number of parliamentarians under its “Parliamentarians for Peace” program. We took the occasion to provide an overview of our Data Privacy Project which aims to promote the convergence of the rules on cross-border transfers of personal data in the Asia Pacific.
As data economy becomes ever more important, the number of data protection legislation is growing rapidly worldwide, including in Asia. This increase is accompanied by several challenges, including the different bases and aims of such laws in Asia and other parts of the world, the lack of any mechanism or structure to ensure compatibility of national laws relating to personal data in Asia, etc.
Through our work of Regulation of Cross-border Transfer of Personal Data in Asia and Transferring Personal Data in Asia – A Path to Legal Certainty and Regional Convergence, we aim to achieve multiple objectives of convergence, such as optimizing the time and resources required to enable responsible data flows, contributing to the efficiency of national laws and regulatory quality, enabling “interoperability” with frameworks in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa and building trust between APAC countries and between them and their partners globally.
We are heartened by the interest in our work, and are grateful for the opportunity to present to parliamentarians from Europe and South America directly.
We thank all contributors who have made the project possible and our Founding Partners for their support.
Both of our data publications continue to be available for free download. Stay tuned for the next installment of the project where we are examining the issue of consent in data privacy in partnership with the Future of Privacy Forum.