Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

These terms and conditions (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of the alliancebioversityciat.org website (“Site”), the Site of the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), a research-for-development organization with headquarters in Via di San Domenico, 1, 00153, Rome, Italy, and a member of CGIAR. The International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, which operates under the name Bioversity International (Bioversity), is a non-profit international organization, domiciled at Via di San Domenico, 1, 00153, Rome, Italy. Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) is a non-profit international organization, domiciled at Km 17 Recta Cali-Palmira, Valle del Cauca, Colombia. CIAT and BIOVERSITY entered into a partnership agreement to operate as the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, (“The Alliance”), in force since January 1, 2020.

By accessing or using the Site, you agree to be bound by these Terms. In addition, regional, national or international laws may apply to the access and use of this Site and you are responsible to comply with them.

If you do not agree to be bound by these Terms, please exit the Site. In addition, specific terms of use may apply to specific materials, data or information available through the Site, in which case your access to such materials shall be governed by these Terms, subject to such specific terms of use.

The Alliance reserves the right to modify these Terms in its discretion at any time, such modifications being effective when posted.

If you have any questions or concerns about these Terms, which include our Privacy and Data Protection Policy and Use of the Site, please contact us by post at the below address or by email at [email protected]

Via di San Domenico 1, 00153 Rome, Italy

2. General aspects

The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT aims at opening up and widely sharing the results and products of research for development endeavors. In the process of better communicating with users, the Alliance, through some features offered through this Site, collects, stores, protects, handles and otherwise uses certain types of information such as Name, Surname and email for editor users.

The Alliance’s standards for integrity, transparency and equity will guide all collected information. We will make every reasonable effort to protect Personally Identifiable Information or Personal Data provided by you and handle collected information appropriately.

Read this Policy carefully before you provide any Personal Data or Personally Identifiable Information to us. Please proceed if you find the following terms agreeable. Otherwise, you are always welcome to peruse our Site without sharing your Personal Data with us.

3. Definitions

These are key terms used in this Policy:

“Personally Identifiable Information” or “Personal Data” means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person; an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier, or to one or more factors specific to the physical, psychological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural, or social identity of that natural person.

“Data Controller” means the natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data.

“Data Processor” means a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which processes personal data on behalf of the controller.

“Data Subject” is the natural person whose personal data is collected and/or processed.

4. What type of Personal Data do we collect from users?

All visitors are free to peruse and access the publicly available information on our Site, without providing any Personally Identifiable Information.

In addition, we have access to and use data collected by Matomo such as your computer’s IP address, the URL/domain name of any referring website, the time and date of your visit to the Site, the user's browser, operating system, and device. By default, IP Anonymisation is enabled in Matomo. This means Matomo stores in the database each new visitor IP address (ipv4 or ipv6 format) with the last components removed to protect user’s privacy.

5. How is the information collected?

The Alliance uses third-party platforms to improve the experience of the user. These third-party platforms allow you to interact with and share our content with your networks and allow us to know your preferences in order to improve your experience. These third-party platforms include Matomo, Matomo Tag, Google Tag Manager, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, ShareThis and Google Search Console (that doesn't track users nor cookies).

Matomo uses cookies, which are small files transferred to your computer’s hard drive through your web browser (if you allow it) that enable the site’s or service provider’s systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information (see section above). Please find Matomo’s’ Privacy Policy here. The purposes for which Matomo uses cookies include: 1. session Management: tracking user behavior within a single visit, to understand the sequence of pages they navigate; 2. Visitor Tracking: Matomo cookies help in identifying returning visitors and provide insights into user behavior across multiple visits, to enhance user experience and tailor content accordingly; 3. User Preferences: to store user preferences, such as language choices, thereby facilitating a more personalized browsing experience.

We will let you know if and when other data-collecting third party platforms are used in the future.

6. How do we use the collected information?

Whether as a Data Controller or as a Data Processor, we may use the information we collect from you as a Data Subject for the following purposes:

To personalize your experience and to allow us to deliver the type of content you are most interested in.
To stay in touch with you and provide updates.
To help diagnose and solve issues with the site in order to improve it and better serve you.
To follow up with you after correspondence (email inquiries), send information, respond to inquiries, and/or other requests or questions.

In doing any of the above, your contact information and preferences are shared among specific and selected few Alliance staff, who have a responsibility and obligation to adhere to Alliance privacy policies.

7. What are cookies?

A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. It enables the website to remember your actions and preferences (such as language, font size and other display preferences) over a period of time, to keep the same settings whenever you come back to the site or browse from one page to another.

8. Do we use cookies? If so, what for?

Yes, the Site uses cookies provided by Matomo

Session Management: We use cookies to track user behavior within a single visit, enabling the analysis of which pages users view in sequence. This aids us in understanding user engagement during their session on the website.
Visitor Tracking: We use cookies to identify returning visitors, facilitating the analysis of user behavior across multiple visits. This helps us understand user retention and patterns over time.
User Preferences: Through cookies, the website can store user preferences, such as language choices, contributing to a personalized browsing experience for users.

You can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies. You do this through your browser settings. Since each browser is a little different, look at your browser’s Help Menu to learn the correct way to modify your cookies, and as mentioned above, you can install an add-on to opt out of Matomo’s cookies altogether, if that is what you chose to do.

9. Social Plugins - Cookies

In our site, we use "social plugins" for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and LinkedIn. The most common use of these social plugins is to share content on social networks. They also transmit cookies to and from our site to the third party service. To know more about the information collected by "third parties" used please go to:

Facebook information: https://www.facebook.com/help/cookies/
Facebook (setting): log into your account > Section privacy.

Twitter information: https://support.twitter.com/articles/20170514
Twitter (setting): https://twitter.com/settings/security

Instagram information: https://help.instagram.com/1896641480634370?ref=ig
Instagram (setting): https://help.instagram.com/284802804971822/

LinkedIn information: https://www.linkedin.com/legal/cookie-policy
LinkedIn (setting): https://www.linkedin.com/settings/

WhatsApp: Terms of Service (whatsapp.com)

10. How is the collected information shared? 

The Alliance uses the information internally, mostly among selected and specific members of the Communications and Partnerships team to perform the tasks mentioned above (see section 6). We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer Personally Identifiable Information to outside parties unless we specifically ask Data Subjects for their consent to do it and you as a Data Subject have provided it. We may engage partners and other parties to assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or serving our users. If for these activities such parties needed some Personal Data, we would share it with them so long as they agree to keep this information confidential.

We may release information when it is necessary to comply with the law, enforce our Site policies, or protect ours or others’ rights, property or safety. In this line, the Alliance reserves the right to disclose Personal Data in case of a request by a competent authority to investigate illegal or fraudulent acts committed against third parties or against the Alliance.

11. How do we store and safeguard your information?

For some of our internal systems, your personal information is contained behind secured networks and is only accessible by a limited number of persons who have special access rights to such systems, and are required to keep the information confidential. In addition, all sensitive information you supply is encrypted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology.

We implement a variety of security measures when a user enters, submits, or accesses their information to maintain the safety of your personal information. All transactions are processed through a gateway provider and are not stored or processed on our servers.

Personal information that is collected and stored by third party services is protected according to the privacy policies of each of these providers. Any personal information that is accessed by the Alliance’s Site from third-party service providers may be stored in Microsoft Office 365 platforms. Non-personal information is safeguarded by Google according to their privacy and terms of service agreements.

12. Third-party links

Occasionally, at our discretion, we may include links to third-party services or providers on our website, or feature content from third-party sites. This Privacy Policy only applies to this Site. Third-party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. To the extent permitted by law, we assume neither responsibility for the content and activities of those linked sites, nor give warranties about their own data and information handling.

13. How long do we retain Personally Identifiable Information?

In accordance with our data retention policy, we will retain your Personal Data only for as long as is reasonably necessary to achieve the purposes for which it is collected and for our legal entitlements and legitimate business interests.

Information collected by external parties, such as IP address, information collected through cookies, the URL/domain name of any referring website, and so on is maintained according to their policies.

14. User’s rights

If you have questions about your privacy rights, want to review any Personal Data that we maintain about you, correct, withdraw your consent, delete your Personal Data, lodge a complaint, or raise a concern, you can contact us at:

Email at [email protected]
Contact us at the following address:

Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT

Via di San Domenico 1, 00153 Rome, Italy

However, you can also contact:

Italian Data Protection Authority via their website at https://www.garanteprivacy.it/web/guest/home_en or write to them at Piazza di Monte Citorio, 121 – 00186 Roma, Italy.
Colombian Data Protection Authority at [email protected] or at Carrera 13 No. 27 – 00, Bogotá, Colombia.
Kenyan Data Protection authority at Britam Tower, 12th & 13th Floor, Hospital Road, Upper Hill – Nairobi, Kenya. Email: [email protected]

15. Availability of the Privacy Policy and updates

This Privacy Policy is effective as of September 1, 2021 and available to you through our website at the URL https://alliancebioversityciat.org/privacy-policy for viewing, printing or downloading.

The Alliance reserves the right to amend the terms of this Policy at any time. We will post a note informing about any updates or amendments to our Policy at https://alliancebioversityciat.org/privacy-policy website.

Last Edited on 2024-04-05

16. Use of the Site 

16. 1. General aspects

These Terms address the conditions applicable to specific materials, data or information available through the Site of the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) at https://alliancebioversityciat.org/privacy-policy. In case, access and use to those materials, data or information is governed by specific terms, these Terms shall apply, subject to such specific terms of use.

By accessing and using this Site, you are agreeing to be bound by these Terms, all applicable laws and regulations, and agree that you are responsible for compliance with any applicable local laws.

If you do not agree with these Terms, refrain from accessing and using this site.

The materials contained in this Site are protected by applicable copyright and trademark law.

16.2. Copyright

Except for third party content, the Bioversity International and CIAT holds the title to the online resource and the materials and content uploaded and posted on the Site.

16.3. Use License

Software

The software behind this Site is Drupal, a free and open-source software licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2.0 or later (GPL-2.0 or later). This means we have the freedom to download, reuse, modify, and distribute Drupal under the terms of either GPL version 2 or any later version. For the full terms of the licenses, see:

GPL v2.0 [link here]

GPL v3.0 [link here]

16.4. Content

In general, all informational products at CGIAR level are regulated by the CGIAR Principles on the Management of Intellectual Assets ( Microsoft Word - CGIAR IA Principles) and the CGIAR Open Access Policy (CGIAR Open Access and Data Management Policy (approved by Consortium Board October 2013).

The content or materials accessed through the Site, include but are not limited to raw data, annotated or otherwise analyzed data, information, reports, videos, images, presentations, written documents such as reports, articles (including peer-reviewed articles), course materials, and services (referred all as “Materials”) that are generated, created or developed either (i) by the Alliance (“Alliance Materials”); (ii) by people who may include staff of or personnel associated with CGIAR Research Programs, CGIAR Platforms and other CGIAR Centers (“Contributed Materials”); or (iii) belonging to or originated by third parties, made available through the Platform site through links or by citation or aggregation (“Third Party Materials”).

(i) Alliance Materials

Unless otherwise and explicitly stated, the Alliance Materials are available under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC 4.0), that allows you to download, copy, reproduce, modify, remix, build upon, disseminate, publish without seeking permission from the owner as long as it is for non-commercial purposes, you give credit to authors/owner as provided in the respective citation, and the copyright notice and this license remain with the Alliance Materials, even if they become part of derived works. Full terms of the license are available here.

(ii) Contributed Materials

As a contributor of Contributed Materials you must have the right to make such a contribution. As the owner of Contributed Materials, you or the organization you represent, as applicable, shall retain copyright. If Contributed Materials are owned by a third party, you must make sure that you have the rights to confer upon the Alliance the license hereby specified. As a contributor you agree to grant the Alliance, its successors and assigns a free of access charges, royalty free, perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, perform, publish and disseminate such Contributed Materials in the Site and through derivative works. Contributors must warrant to the best of their knowledge that the Contributed Materials do not infringe the rights of any third party, including copyrights, privacy protection, informed consent and/or biodiversity-related access and benefit-sharing rights. In case of doubt, a contributor shall abstain from providing Contributed Materials to the Site or if already contributed, withdraw such Contributed Materials. The contributor shall defend, indemnify, and hold the Alliance harmless from any resulting claims, damages or costs (including reasonable attorney fees) in case of false or misleading information or negligence.

If you delete a Contributed Material, the Alliance does not warrant that it will be able to or will take responsibility for removing deleted contributions from the Site, including but not limited to those outside of its reasonable control or those to whom you or others may have forwarded your Contributed Material.

The Alliance might, but it is no obligation to, review your Contributed Material. The Alliance may, at its sole discretion, remove your Contributed Material if it establishes that it violates these Terms. Acceptance of Contributed Material does not constitute an endorsement or sponsorship of the Contributed Material by the Alliance.

(iii) Third Party Materials

Third Party Materials are governed by the terms applicable and contained in third party websites. the Alliance is not responsible for or has no control over such Third Party Materials. The Alliance provides access to such Third Party Materials for convenience only. The Alliance makes every effort but does not ensure revision of Third Party Material and makes no warranties or representations about the material, information, products, or services offered by third parties. Display of Third Party Materials does not constitute endorsement or sponsorship bythe Alliance of any Third Party Materials. Use of any such Third Party Material is at the user’s own risk.

16.5. Accuracy of Materials

Materials appearing onthe Alliance’s Site could include technical, typographical, or photographic errors. The Alliancedoes not warrant that any of such Materials on its Sites are accurate, complete or current.The Alliance may make changes to any Materials contained on its site at any time without notice. Nevertheless the Alliance does not make any commitment to update the Materials. Users of and contributors to the the Alliance Site are completely responsible for the accuracy of the content uploaded by them.

16.6. Disclaimer 

The Alliance’s software and the Alliance's materials on the Site are provided on an “as is” basis. CThe Alliance makes no warranties, either expressed or implied, including, without limitation, as to the merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement of intellectual property rights or any other violation of rights.

Further, the Alliance does not warrant or make any representations concerning the accuracy, completeness, likely results, timeliness, or reliability of the use of the source code or object code of the software, of the data, information, content or any other materials on the website, or otherwise relating to such materials, or on any other sites or websites linked to this Site.

6.7. Limitations

Except as prohibited by law, in no event shall the Alliance or its suppliers be liable for any damages (including, without limitation, special, indirect, punitive or consequential damages or damages for any loss of data or profit, or due to business interruption) arising out of the access, use or reliance, or of the inability to access, use or rely on the Alliance’s Site and the content or any other materials on the Site.

16.8. Prohibited use

You agree not to use the Alliances’s Site, including the Materials, for any unlawful purpose or in any way that would violate the rights of others, including intellectual property rights. Further, you agree to not use the Alliance's logos and its name without the Alliance’s prior written authorization.

16.9. Modifications

The Alliance may review these Terms at any time without notice. The most current version of the Terms can be reviewed by clicking on the link or links located on the Site. Please check these Terms periodically to see whether they have changed. By using The Alliance’s website you agree to be bound by the then current version of these Terms.

16.10. No waiver

Either party’s failure to insist on or enforce strict performance of any of the Terms shall not be construed as a waiver of any provision or right. Nothing herein shall be deemed a waiver of any of the privileges and immunities of CIAT and Bioversity International.

16.11. Governing law

These Terms are governed by and construed in accordance with recognized and general principles of international law, to the exclusion of any single national system of law. General principles of law shall be deemed to include the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts of 2016. You and the Alliance will use their best efforts to resolve any dispute, controversy or claim arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Site by negotiation.

In the case an amicable settlement is not reached within sixty (60) days of such dispute, controversy or claim having been notified by one party to the other in writing, the dispute, controversy or claim will be settled by arbitration in accordance with the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules in effect on the date of this contract. There will be one arbitrator appointed by the parties by mutual consent, or failing this, by the Secretary-General of the Permanent Court of Arbitration. The place of arbitration, proposed by the Alliance, will be a neutral venue where the parties can expect a fair result. The language to be used in the arbitration proceedings will be English.