Blockchain and its embedded digital identities goes beyond registration and storage. It is meant to be the key to managing a person’s digital identity that remains fragmented and is at risk for every platform that it is used to register and therefore create another new set of identity as extension.

In managing digital identities under Blockchain, the person’s main personal details remain secure and hidden from the services or products that they use their digital identity with. This means registration for digital wallets or participation in social-science studies can be possible without divulging personal information.

Managing digital identities will also be essential in tracking the untracked, the invisible and the displaced people, such as the refugees coming out of problematic countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and among others. In an unprecedented human mass migration unseen since the time of the melting of the last ice age or the separation of the continents, this global humanitarian problem has exhausted the resources of international organizations that are dedicated in alleviating problems arising from mass migration. Problems such as health, hunger, education and financial destitution are some of the biggest challenges that the United Nations are facing.

Blockchain with Biometric IDs

One of the main problems in the immigrant crisis is the invisibility of each person – whether man, women, child or the elderly as a large percentage of the migrants remain undocumented and for the ones who have crossed into Europe, many of them disappeared from the records. The local governments of Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Turkey were also finding it hard to document the migrants that have entered the country for the past year to the present.

In solving a large problem, technology and scientific planning starts with the approach of fundamentalism. In this case, the lack of identity is the problem and there are platforms today that are both existing and upcoming that is paving way for a groundbreaking solution.

Blockchain for example, is being used to manage identities and keep track of the migrants in a refugee camp in Jordan. With the combination of an ID Biometric system that runs on an Ethereum based Blockchain managed by the World Food Programme. In this scenario, a Syrian refugee can purchase goods by submitting to an iris scan at the checkout counter. The identity is then processed and confirmed in a digital identity database in the United Nations Blockchain . Once identity is confirmed, there is no need to pay in cash as the food account is credited.

In this scenario, distributing aid to refugees in need of sustenance becomes a matter of good-will and without the need for cash transactions, the process of aid is expedited with the lowest cost as much as possible and in real-time.

This program is called Building Blocks and it launched in early 2017. It is designed to help the UN distribute aid to more than 10,000 Syrian refugees that have taken shelter in the country of Jordan. By end of 2018, the program aims to register and cover more than 500,000 refugees.

The program is also a stepping stone in managing the once and still undocumented people to be registered into social services, legal records, educational and banking sectors. All are pre-requisites in assimilating into society with proper documentation.

Blockchain is the once nascent technology that is giving identity to people that were once without identities and has taken a fundamental step in documenting people that have since been displaced by political turmoil.

DynaQuest Technology Services believes in the capability of Blockchain to transform businesses and humanitarian aid.