Finding Refuge: Blockchain Technology as the Solution to the Syrian Refugee Identification Crisis

• Publication year: 2020
• Citation: Vol. 48 No. 2

Finding Refuge: Blockchain Technology as the Solution to the Syrian Refugee Identification Crisis

Victoria Heather Barbino^*

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Table of Contents

I. Identifications and Their Relationship to Rights...............528

II. Immigrant Covering and Understanding Immigrant Rights .........................................................................................................531

A. Conversion.........................................................................532
B. Passing..............................................................................533

i. Sanctuary Cities..........................................................534

C. Covering ............................................................................ 535

i. Municipal Identifications............................................536

III. Syrian Refugees and Documentation.....................................538

IV. Blockchain Technology............................................................540

V. Universal Identifications via Blockchain............................542

VI. Refugee Digital Identifications..............................................546

A. The World Food Program.................................................546
B. Estonian e-Residency........................................................547
C. Finland's MONI Program.................................................548
D. Zug, Switzerland................................................................549
E. Bitnation............................................................................549

VII. Criticisms......................................................................................551

A. Blockchain Energy Efficiency...........................................552

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B. Security..............................................................................553

i. DAO Hack..................................................................554
ii. Private Key Encryption..............................................555

VIII. The Future Implementation: Goals.........................................557

IX. Digital Identifications and Covering....................................559

X. Conclusion...................................................................................561

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Turning fifteen years old, for some, means the doors of opportunity and freedom begin to open. In the United States, many high school sophomores see the occasion as one step closer to the teenage liberation of getting their driver's license on their sixteenth birthday. At fifteen, the card, smaller than a palm, is a taste of independence—the right to drive anywhere, anytime, to wherever the holder so chooses.

In Lebanon, for a refugee displaced from Syria following the country's deadly civil war, turning fifteen signifies an age of the restriction of liberty. In order to legally reside in Lebanon, everyone over the age of fifteen is required to have a legal residency permit, including refugees.¹ The only way to obtain the residency permit is to provide certain identification documents, many of which can only be issued and renewed by the Syrian government.² Thus, without the proper identification, these refugees reside illegally.³ They are not legally permitted in Lebanon and are unable to return home to Syria.⁴ Stuck between childhood and adulthood, these adolescents also find themselves also stuck between two countries, stateless and vulnerable.

Without the required identifications, the refugee population faces "harassment, arrest, detention, and not being able to find a job without a valid residency visa."⁵ For women, the perils are even more severe.⁶ Ghada, a Syrian refugee living in Lebanon, fears for her daughter who turned fifteen three years ago in Lebanon and has been living without papers.⁷ Her daughter, unable to find work without a visa but desperate to make a living, is more likely to be exploited into sex trafficking, child labor, and early marriage.⁸

At such a young age and having already suffered so much, these young people are forced to make a choice: do they continue to live life in fear and shadows, or do they risk returning to Syria? Sama, a fifteen-year-old Syrian refugee, resides without identification in Lebanon and is married to a fellow Syrian refugee. He, also fifteen, has risked returning briefly to Syria to renew his residency, so that he might work without fear of detention. Sama fears for his safety, saying, "Going back to Syria was the only way he could renew his residency, but it was not worth it. But what could he have done otherwise? . . . Now he is gone, and we have no idea about his whereabouts . . . Our whole life is determined by a paper."⁹

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Sama and Ghada are just two of 1.1 million refugees living in Lebanon.¹⁰ Their lives are hard and adjustment has been difficult: around 170,000 live below the poverty line, only half are economically active, and one in three works in the unskilled labor market.¹¹ Worldwide, seventy percent of Syrian refugees lack proper identification documents.¹² They live in shadows, on the corners of cities and towns, making homes in new countries under the cloud of fear. Without proper identification, life is constantly met with roadblocks and being turned away from basic social opportunities.¹³ All this aside, Ghada knows that it is better than the alternative. She says, "But we had no choice. It was either leave Syria or death. I chose life."¹⁴

Identification is the key to social opportunity and often the physical manifestation of the rights that one possesses in their present location.¹⁵ In the current system, central governments grant main forms of identifications, each holding different rights.¹⁶ Depending on jurisdiction, institutions from banks to ballot boxes can only be accessed with valid identification, preventing those without, even those who are legally entitled to them, from gaining the benefit of government programs and personal opportunities.¹⁷ Without valid identification, persons can be barred from employment, housing, and are often pushed to the edges of society.¹⁸ Even in the United States, after losing all forms of identification, the process to reapply and receive new ones can be expensive.¹⁹ For example, the fees to receive a new copy of one's "birth

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certificate can range from $25 in California to $12 in South Carolina. And fees rise quickly when assisting an entire family."²⁰ Not having proper identification can create a vicious cycle of poverty.²¹ Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, commented, "[w]ithout an ID, basically you don't exist."²²

Refugees fleeing the Syrian Civil War have struggled to maintain documentary identifications which are easily lost, stolen, or confiscated during crisis.²³ Lack of identification documents makes it difficult for refugees to prove who they are and where they came from.²⁴ Without identification, assimilation into a new culture can be difficult, from being barred from opening accounts at banks to being unable to prove one's educational background.²⁵ This issue does not just affect refugees: 1.1 billion people in the world lack identification, inhibiting access to educational, healthcare-related, and financial benefits.²⁶

The United Nations signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.²⁷ Article Six of this document says, "[e]veryone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law."²⁸ Article Six has been interpreted as the right to a legal identification document,²⁹ which the UN has reiterated in its Sustainable Development Goals, creating a goal to create a "legal identity" for all persons by 2030.³⁰

In order to fulfill these goals, the United Nations and private companies have begun using blockchain technology to create forms of digital identifications for refugees.³¹ Blockchain technology creates a decentralized leger that distributes information to all members of the network instead of containing it

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on one centralized point of servers; it is immutable and un-hackable.³² Because it is so secure without losing its accessibility, blockchain is the ideal technology to support identity documentation.³³ Without a centralized server, documentation and transactional history cannot be deleted or destroyed,³⁴ solving many of the issues of traditional identification.³⁵ By putting identification materials on the blockchain, refugees, as well as other populations who do not have centralized identifications, can have a form of legal identity which will allow them to more easily assimilate into the societies and countries that host them.³⁶

This Note will explore the importance of universal blockchain-based identifications and the rights and opportunities that can be granted by a decentralized identification. First, this Note will break down the histories and rights of identifications and their importance to vulnerable populations through the lens of Immigration Covering by Stella Burch Elias and then, more specifically, it will discuss the identification crisis facing Syrian refugees today.³⁷ Additionally, it will discuss blockchain technology, an overview of the technology itself, the potential application of the technology to universal identification, and current applications of this technology to identification. Finally, it will discuss criticisms of the technology and how blockchain-based identifications might actually work in global implementation.

I. Identifications and Their Relationship to Rights

The earliest record of a central government distributing identification documents to civilians is in the English Safe Conducts Act of 1414, which made reference to a passport system.³⁸ However, government identifications and passports were not widely disseminated or used by civilians until the twentieth-century.³⁹ In August, 1914, World War I began, and, with the mass migration of refugees across Europe, the...