The Syrian Arab Republic’s devastating conflict has led to what is probably the most catastrophic humanitarian crisis of our time. Since the onset of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, more than 11 million people have been killed, injured, or displaced from their homes. On January 2nd, 2018, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) declared that a staggering 5,481,262 registered refugees are dispersed throughout the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region alone. More often than not, those that find themselves escaping war struggle to establish an identity in the nation they flee too. This renders the prospect of a new life almost implausible since many of the most basic necessities– such as a driver’s license, bank account, and healthcare–can not be acquired without identification. The ID2020 program is a new initiative in collaboration with the UNHCR, Microsoft, and Accenture that strives to employ modern technology in order to provide identity to the 1.1 billion people worldwide who currently live without an officially recognized identity.
Goals
As outlined at the ID2020 Summit back in 2017, the ID2020 Alliance is aiming to accomplish three main goals. Firstly, the alliance will finance projects around the globe to implement secure, interoperable digital identity solutions. Additionally, it will set standards for a trustworthy decentralized identity framework, facilitating interoperability and creating a reliable market. Lastly, it will enable multi-stakeholder collaboration on digital identity by establishing a neutral governance structure, promoting participation through a diverse ecosystem, and hosting meetings, events, and collaborative discussions.
Technology
Because of its innate qualities of being decentralized, trustless, and verifiable, blockchain technology is the perfect solution to store identities. Although the back-end of the proposed software is still in the works, there are several inferences we can make at this point by observing other identity projects in the blockchain ecosystem. Uport, for example, is an identity and messaging protocol that aims to form the identity layer for the decentralized web. The identity layer would serve as a container for reputational attributes like name, birthday, social insurance numbers, email addresses, etc. Organizations that designate identities–such as governments, banks, and IT companies– can cryptographically sign these attributes and thus verify the validity of them. The ID2020 back end would most likely take a similar picture: biometric data with blockchain to create a permanent identity that can be displayed on a phone or other device. The system’s application program interface (API) will allow individuals, governments, commercial entities and other institutions to develop additional services on top of the common foundation. The cryptography associated with blockchain helps ensure individuals are the owners of their own identities and personal data, a central tenet of the ID2020 initiative. In fact, David Treat, a managing director at Accenture, states that a person’s record may only be accessed for the purposes of identity verification, and not for tracking the individual or accessing all of their personal data.
Barriers to Success
Although the goals outlined by the ID2020 initiative will greatly alter how humans establish and interact with their identity, there are significant barriers to overcome before this can become a reality. The most blatant would probably be convincing nations to create decentralized identities for its citizens and then ensuring these nations are universally accepting these identities as valid. Another issue facing this initiative is the fact that in its current state, blockchain technology simply cannot handle the data required to store even a small portion of the world’s population identity data. However, as the blockchain ecosystem continues to evolve at a rapid pace, these issues that are systemic to scaling the technology will begin to become resolved.
Moving Forward
Blockchain’s multitude of applications truly is indicative of a more efficient and systematic world. The very fact that such developments are on the horizon and are fast becoming realities is inspiring and representative of our collective ability to capitalize on disruptive technologies. Although still in its early stages of development, the ID2020 program is bound to help alleviate a serious problem both individuals and governments face, and has the potential to drastically improve the lives of those who, much like the refugees fleeing from war in Syria, currently exist without an identification.
