Privacy and Data Protection Policy

Privacy Notice

International Rescue Committee, Inc. (IRC) recognizes the importance of protecting the personal information collected from visitors to this website and users in the operation of its services and taking reasonable steps to maintain the security, integrity and privacy of any information in accordance with this Privacy Notice.  By submitting your information to IRC via this website you consent to the practices described in this Notice.  If you are less than 18 years of age, then you must first seek the consent of your parent or guardian prior to submitting any personal information.

This Privacy Notice describes how IRC collects and uses the personal information you provide to IRC via this website. It also describes the choices available to you regarding our use of your personal information and how you can access and update this information.

How we collect information

IRC may collect personal information from you in the following ways:

  • directly from your verbal or written input (such as by consenting to receiving emails);
  • Indirectly, for example, your personal information may be shared with us by third parties including sub-contractors; advertising networks; analytics providers and search information providers. To the extent we have not done so already, we will notify you when we receive personal information about you from them and tell you how and why we intend to use that personal information,
  • when it is publicly available, your personal information may be available to us from external publicly available sources or from third parties who are entitled to pass on your details, or
  • when you visit our website we automatically collect the following types of personal information: (a) Technical information, including the internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your device to the internet, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions and operating systems and platforms; (b) Information about your visit to the websites, including the uniform resource locator (URL) clickstream to, through and from the website (including date and time), services you viewed or searched for, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, referral sources, page interaction information (such as scrolling and clicks) and methods used to browse away from the page.

Information you provide

We may collect, store and otherwise process the following kinds of personal information:

  • Contact details, such as your name, affiliation, and email address;
  • information about your computer/ mobile device and your visits to and use of this website, including, for example, your IP address and geographical location;
  • material you have contributed to on this website;
  • Personal descriptions and photographs;
  • Any other personal information which you choose to share with us.

Use of your information

We may use your information in the following ways (after obtaining your consent, if required, or through pursuant to our legitimate interest):

  • To provide you with information about our activities and services that you request from us;
  • For internal business and research purposes to help enhance, evaluate, develop, and create this website (including usage statistics, such as “page views” on this websites and the products therein), activities, and services;
  • To notify you about changes or updates to our websites, activities, or services;
  • To administer our services and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, statistical, and survey purposes.

Lawful basis

The GDPR requires us to rely on one or more lawful basis to use your personal information. We consider the grounds listed below to be relevant:

  • Where you have provided your consent for us to use your personal information in a certain way (for example, we will ask for your consent to use your personal information to send you fundraising material by email, and we may ask for your explicit consent to collect special categories of your personal information).
  • Where necessary so that we can comply with a legal obligation to which we are subject (for example, where we are obliged to share your personal information with regulatory bodies which govern our work and services).
  • Where there is a legitimate interest in us doing so.

The GDPR allows us to collect and process your personal information if it is reasonably necessary to achieve our or others’ legitimate interests (as long as that processing is fair, balanced and does not unduly impact your rights).

In broad terms, our “legitimate interests” means the interests of running IRC as a charitable entity and pursuing our aims and ideals; for example providing information about current humanitarian crises and maintaining access to materials on this website.

When we process your personal information to achieve such legitimate interests, we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative), and your rights under data protection laws. We will not use your personal information for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you, for example where use would be excessively intrusive (unless, for instance, we are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

Retention of your information

Personal information will not be kept longer than is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. This means that, unless information must be retained for legal purposes, personal information will be securely destroyed, put beyond use or erased from IRC’s systems and/or this website when it is no longer required or, where applicable, following a request from you to destroy or erase your personal information.

Security / storage of and access to your personal information

IRC is committed to keeping your personal information safe and secure and we have appropriate and proportionate security policies and organisational and technical measures in place to help protect your information.

Your personal information is only accessible by appropriately trained staff, volunteers and contractors, and stored on secure servers with features enacted to prevent unauthorised access.

International Data Transfers

Given that we are part of an international organisation and because we use agencies and/ or suppliers to process personal information on our behalf, it is possible that personal information we collect from you will be transferred to and stored in a location outside the UK and European Economic Area (“EEA”), for example the United States.

Please note that some countries outside of the UK and EEA have a lower standard of protection for personal information, including lower security requirements and fewer rights for individuals. Where your personal information is transferred, stored and/or otherwise processed outside the UK and EEA in a country that does not offer an equivalent standard of protection to the UK and EEA, we will take all reasonable steps necessary to ensure that the recipient implements appropriate safeguards (such as by entering into standard contractual clauses) designed to protect your personal information and to ensure that your personal information is treated securely and in accordance with this Notice.

Disclosure and sharing of your information

In general, we may disclose your personal information to selected third parties in order to achieve the purposes set out in this Notice:

  • Where necessary in connection with services provided by third parties (i) who provide us with a wide range of office, administrative, information technology, legal and accountancy, production, payment, or business management services with whom we will ensure there is a GDPR compliant contract in place, and (ii) who are required to comply with this Notice and applicable data protection legislation;
  • Where IRC is required to disclose personal information in response to lawful requests by public authorities and government agencies, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements; to comply with a subpoena or other legal process; when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, to enforce our Terms of Use, or to protect the rights, property or safety of our services, users or others; and to investigate fraud;
  • Other IRC affiliates;
  • Analytics and search engine providers (certain identifiers, such as IP address, only).

In particular, we reserve the right to disclose your personal information to third parties:

  • in the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we will disclose your personal information to the (prospective) seller or buyer of such business or assets;
  • if substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, personal information held by us may be one of the transferred assets;
  • if we are under any legal or regulatory duty to do so; and/or
  • to protect the rights, property or safety of IRC, its personnel, users, visitors or others.

Cookies

As is true of most websites, we gather certain information automatically. This information may include IP addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (“ISP”), referring/exit pages, the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data to analyze trends in the aggregate and administer the site. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.

IRC uses cookies or similar technologies to analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movements around the website, to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole, and to ensure that our website is secure. You can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level, but if you choose to disable cookies, it may limit your use of certain features or functions on our website or services.

You can find out more information about cookies at www.allaboutcookies.org

The below provides more information about the cookies we use and why:

  • Cookie: Google Analytics: These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our websites. We use the information to compile reports and help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the sites, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they have visited. Click here for an overview of privacy at Google and to edit your settings.
    • ga – Used to distinguish users. Duration: 2 years.

 

  • Language: This website uses a language cookie to assist you when changing between languages in the resources section.

Your rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and The Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) you have a number of rights with regard to your personal data. You have the right to request to be informed whether or not we hold or process any of your personal information (orally, in writing, or by emailing airbel@rescue.org). In order to facilitate our response to you, we ask that you make your request in writing. In your written request, you may:

  • Request that we provide you with details of your personal information that we process, the purpose for which it is processed, the recipients of such information, the existence of any automated decision making involving your personal information, and what transfer safeguards we have in place;
  • Request that we rectify any errors in your personal information;
  • Request that we delete your personal information;
  • Request that we transfer your personal information to a third party;
  • You have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing of your personal information which produces legal or similarly significant effects on you, unless such a decision (is necessary to enter into/perform a contract between you and us/another organisation); (ii) is authorised by UK law to which IRC is subject (as long as that law offers you sufficient protection); or (iii) is based on your explicit consent;
  • Object to processing where we are (i) processing your personal information on the basis of the legitimate interests ground; (ii) using your personal information for direct marketing; or (iii) using your information for statistical purposes;
  • To ask for processing of your personal information to be restricted if there is disagreement about its accuracy or legitimate usage.

You have the right to lodge a complaint about us or the way we have processed your personal information to the data protection supervisory authority in your home country. In the UK, the data protection authority is the Information Commissioner’s Office – www.ico.org.uk. For further information on how to exercise this right, please contact us using the details below.

Links and Third-parties

This website may include links to third-party websites. In using such links, please be aware that each third-party website is subject to its own privacy and data protection policies and is not covered by our Privacy Notice.

Changes to Privacy Notice

Please note that this Privacy Notice is reviewed periodically. IRC reserves the right to modify its Privacy Notice at any time without notice. Any changes to the Privacy Notice will be posted on this page and will become effective on the date of posting. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices. This page was last updated on 28 October 2024.

How to contact us

Any questions or concerns about this Notice or our use of your personal information should be directed to:

E-mail: airbel@rescue.org | Phone: +1 855 9RESCUE (973-7283). | Post: International Rescue Committee, 122 East 42nd Street, New York, New York 10168-1289.

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