COUNTING THE SHADOWS: CAN BIOMETRICS ALLEVIATE STATELESSNESS AMID CONFLICT

By Shivangi Raj Verma, a second year law student pursuing B.A.LLB. (Hons.) at RMLNLU, Lucknow.

& Pallakshi Pandiya, a second year student pursuing BA.LLB (Hons.) at RMLNLU, Lucknow

---

INTRODUCTION

What happens when those with no legal identity become data, and that data becomes their only claim to humanity?

Due to immigration crises, border conflicts, and wars, at least 4.4 million peoplehave been deprived of nationality. These are the Stateless persons, defined under Article 1 of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, as “a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law.” With nowhere to belong and no place to call home, they are, thus, denied basic rights. Unlike refugees, who flee conflict and cross international borders, stateless persons often remainunseen, undocumented, and stripped of a fair chance at life before it even begins. Their global figure is estimated to be significantly higher as most countries either do not report the numbers or deflate them. The result is a stark gap between official statistics and the lived reality of millions.

The challenge for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (hereinafter, “UNHCR”) and the host countries remains to identify and include the stateless people in their databases to ensure that theygetprotection. Initiated in 2015, the Biometric Identity Management System (hereinafter, “BIMS”), UNHCR’s primary identification tool, uses sophisticated technology to verify whether a person requesting assistance truly requires it and facilitate resources. UNHCR uses biometrics primarily to identify refugees, returnees,the internally displaced, and asylum-seekers through their unique physiological characteristics to create a record, amassing almost 12 million records. However, stateless individuals are not appropriately addressed in this system. The authors seek to examine how BIMS could be extended to serve stateless populations,broadening the purview of a primarily refugee-focused tool into a comprehensive solution for the stateless people.

SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF BIMS

Za’atari refugee camp of Jordan is one of the most comprehensive implementation of BIMS, becoming a norm for most UN refugee camps. In 2020 itself, more than 37 million refugees around the world had registered their biometric information through BIMS enabling aid payments with digital wallets, communicationwith the UNHCR through chatbots and even receive aid from drones. A major reason for BIMS’ success is the global interest in data-driven technology spilling over towards humanitarian relief programs. An example of the same is Accenture’s BIMS which was introduced by the UNHCR in Dzaleka Refugee Camp of Malawi, registering 17000 camp refugees there, and 120,000 refugees in Thailand integrating them in the international database, marking one of the early successes of BIMS.

The UNHCR also developed a mobile app which scans UN provided ID Cards and presents the associated biographic data to provide secondary identification verification for aid-providers allowing an easier access to humanitarian aid. After integrating BIMS with IrisGuard (an iris scanning technology), the UN facilitated ATMaccessfor Syrian refugees to receive a direct cash allowance from the UNHCR. This solved the hindrance of transportation and delivery of material aid and prevented fraud. The program was successful and later adopted by World Food Program(WFP), and now Syrian refugees in Jordan can pay for their groceries in real time. The adoption of these programs have been positive per UNHCR reports, and through the push of donor and resettlement countries, the use of BIMS for refugees has turned into a near-universal prerequisite worldwide.

Thus, in a decade of its rollout the BIMS has positioned itself as the norm for refugee camps rather than an experimental tryst with technology with hopes to improve humanitarian aid. It is now, an actively employed tool to protect and sustain the displaced, circumventing the lack of paperwork and documentation that would otherwise affect their chances to receive aid.

THE CRISIS OF INVISIBILITY IN CONFLICT ZONES

There are approximately 115 conflicts waging across the globe in today’s precarious geopolitical conditions. At the time of such conflicts,stateless people face ‘double invisibility’. They have no nationality, hence no identity, no State, hence no protection, and become completely vulnerable. Due to the existing gap in their documentation, it becomes impossible for them to gain access to shelter and aid. This deficiency makes them particularly vulnerable when seeking asylum.For example, Oummal, a local organization in Lebanon, documented such cases and presented accounts of stateless families’ repeated failed pleas to secure admission to government-run shelters. Similarly, in Syria, a significant proportion of Kurdish Syrians were stripped of their citizenship depriving them of their civil, political, economic, and cultural rights established in international covenants and instruments.Their very existence went unacknowledged by the state, leaving them unidentified and exposed, with their lives placed in constant jeopardy.

Not exclusive to one generation, this vulnerability extends to the children who were born without any birth certification. Without legal acknowledgment to unregistered children and their families, they are trapped in the status of statelessness for perpetuity. Recognizing this lacuna, the UNHCR and United Nations Children’s Fund (hereinafter, “UNICEF”) have also established a Strategic Collaboration Framework to abate childhood statelessness. Here, biometrics can serve as a potent catalyst to improve accessibility for stateless children and adults alike.

BIOMETRIC RECOGNITION: A NEW KIND OF VISIBILITY

Since citizenship is a sovereign function of a State, each country has its separate framework to accord its citizenship. Nevertheless, the right to nationality is a fundamental human right enshrined in Art 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (hereinafter, “UDHR”). The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness ratified by over 70 signatories, obliges parties to implement safeguards to reduce statelessness, while even non-parties can adopt measures to prevent it. In line with this, more than 90 states are obligated under regional treaties to grant nationality to children who would otherwise be left stateless. The UN General Assembly has specifically requested UNHCR to “provide relevant technical and advisory services about the preparation and implementation of nationality legislation.” 

Stateless individuals exist in a space in-between. This void, however, can be partially bridged through theBIMS, by extending to stateless populations the biometric protocols already used for refugees.Biometrics caninter alia offer two functions: (I) identification, and (II) verification. These functions can facilitate registration, food distribution, healthcare, and repatriation assistance. Biometric enrolment would establish unique registered identities andeasein individual identification.The issued identity card would permit access to healthcare, housing, international protection, etc.

In this backdrop, BIMS offers stateless persons much-needed visibility during conflicts[MS2] , bringing them out of the shadows and into the reach of relief providers. While it cannot confer nationality, BIMS can serve as a functional stopgapto recognize and protect stateless individuals through a phased framework. The framework would be as follows:

The convergence of blockchain and biometric identification provides a practical avenue for this vision to be realized. The World Food Programme's Building Blocks project in Jordan shows this kind of potential at scale where more than 500,000 Syrian refugees received food aid using iris scans tied to blockchain accounts, without the necessity for conventional identity papers. UNICEF's Rahat project in Nepal also employed blockchain based digital vouchers for transparent delivery of aid. These systems can be made stateless for populations: biometric registration via BIMS establishes an immutable digital identity in a permissioned blockchain, which in turn facilitates humanitarian services access via smart contracts. By contrast to paper-based systems, blockchain records cannot be lost during conflict, destroyed at border points, or tampered with by corrupt middlemen. The technology is available, has been tested in the field in humanitarian settings, and deals with the root issue for stateless individuals, documenting their existence without needing state confirmation.

Phase1: Immediate Humanitarian Access Through Biometric-Blockchain Integration

Building on UNHCR's existing BIMS infrastructure, stateless persons would undergo biometric enrollment (iris scanning and fingerprinting) with the humanitarian agencies. This would create an immutable identity record on a permissioned blockchain network similar to the Building Blocks architecture generating a unique digital identity. Upon enrollment, the stateless individual would automatically get access to a blockchain-based digital wallet during emergency situations through smart contracts. This would enable immediate access to:

·       Emergency shelter registration

·       Food assistance through digital vouchers

·       Primary healthcare services

In Jordan's Azraq refugee camp, individuals without any documentation received consistent food assistance through iris scans alone, with the system saving $150,000 monthly in bank transfer fees and virtually eliminating fraud.

Phase2: Cross-Border Interoperability And Service Expansion

The second phase establishes a consortium-based blockchain network where multiple host countries participate in a permissioned system coordinated by UNHCR. Drawing from the Global Compact on Refugees framework, donor countries could fund blockchain infrastructure as a condition for burden-sharing arrangements and in return can enjoy reduced administrative costs, fraud prevention and international recognition for humanitarian cooperation. Once a stateless person's biometric blockchain identity is established and verified, the system would enable them access to secondary and tertiary healthcare through tokenized health records, education and financial aid, modeled on Nepal’s Rahat System.

Phase3:Digital to Legal Identity

Finally, Article 1(4) of the 1961 Convention provides a legal foothold for initiating nationality determination procedures. In this phase, while the Biometric Blockchain system with BIMS can support documentation for nationality determination, it cannot compel state recognition. Political will and legal reform remain indispensable.

There have been collaborative initiatives between States and UNHCR to reduce statelessness. For example, in 2003, UNHCR provided advice and operational support for a citizenship campaign in Sri Lanka, where 200,000 people acquired proof of their new Sri Lankan citizenship. In 2007, Nepal issued proof of nationality to 2.6 million people. More recently, Turkmenistan conducted a registration drive with support from UNHCR to naturalize its stateless population. For biometric identification in Kenya, data collection and storage is done by UNHCR. This signifies the potential for a structured and functional collaboration between UNHCR and a State, paving the way for providing visibility to the stateless.

CONCLUSION

The BIMS system provides a promising base for the vision to mitigate statelessness by linking it with biometrics and making the stateless people verifiable with digital footprints. The positive endeavours in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Turkmenistan and Kenya demonstrate that a collaborative effort can bring substantial results when paired with political will and legal frameworks. Even though BIMS is a technical solution to a political and legal issue, its contribution to a comprehensive framework can result in substantial legal improvements, providing concrete pathways from statelessness to citizenship.

While navigating this intricate intersection of technology, law, and human rights, the ultimate goal of serving humanity must remain intact, and through theaforementioned3-tier model, the author believes that these steps, if implemented suitably, would help ensuring that the stateless people are recognised as full and equal members of global human community. BIMS can be more than just a registration tool, it could serve as an enabler ofhuman rights by providing a digital existenceto the stateless people andmanifesting the abstract Right to Recognition into a functional revitalising mechanism, thereby rebuilding legal invisibility into humanitarian acknowledgment, opening doors to a safe and protected life.