RIPD Advances Regional Data Privacy Agenda

In May, Argentina’s Agency for Access to Public Information (AAIP) participated in the 2026 meeting of the Ibero-American Data Protection Network (RIPD), which brought together the region’s leading data protection authorities to discuss emerging challenges in privacy, digital rights, and artificial intelligence.

One of the meeting’s most significant outcomes was the adoption of the Personal Data Protection Standards for Ibero-American States, an updated version of the 2017 standards designed to reflect new developments and emerging perspectives in data protection. The Standards provide a non-binding reference framework aimed at strengthening, modernizing, and harmonizing data protection regimes across the region. They also recommend that national legislations include an extraterritorial scope of application for processing activities related to the offering of goods or services to—or the monitoring of the behavior of—individuals located in the region, among others.

The framework’s key innovations include:

• The introduction of guidelines on artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
• The classification of the processing of neural data as high-risk processing, indicating that processing activities such as the improper inference of mental states or the improper modification of a person’s will may be subject to prohibitions.
• The expansion of the measures required to protect minors.
• Recommendations for algorithmic auditing systems.
• The expansion of definitions through the inclusion, among others, of biometric data, genetic data, neurodata, pseudonymization, and profiling.

At the meeting, the Head of the AAIP, Beatriz de Anchorena, also presented recent findings of the Ibero-American Observatory on Personal Data Protection, a regional initiative dedicated to producing technical knowledge, conducting comparative analysis, and identifying regulatory trends in privacy and data protection.
 

In collaboration with the RIPD and the Ibero-American General Secretariate (SEGIB), the Observatory is currently developing four policy resources:

1. minimum elements for legislative reform process in data protection,
2. a regional reference framework for the design, deployment, and ethnical oversight of artificial intelligence systems,
3. a regional protocol for cyber incident response, and
4. recommendations for the creation and strengthening of supervisory authorities and algorithmic auditing systems.
    

De Anchorena’s presentation also highlighted a growing trend toward regulatory convergence across Ibero-America, reflected in the expansion and strengthening of ARCO rights and data portability, the adoption of data breach notification requirements, enhanced protections for minors in digital spaces, and the increasing extraterritorial reach of data protection laws, particularly with respect to global digital platforms.

The outcomes of the 2026 RIPD demonstrate the region’s broader effort to build a common vision for data protection. The development and implementation of these initiatives are expected to strengthen regional cooperation and help address the regulatory challenges that digital transformation and artificial intelligence pose.