原创译文 | 难民身份认证难？区块链来解决

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导读：在缅甸，穆斯林少数民族因为被剥夺公民身份，一直都是残暴暴力活动的目标，而鉴于区块链可以分散，透明和安全地存储重要个人信息，最近罗兴亚民族难民正在利用区块链型技术解决他们公民身份问题。（文末更多往期译文推荐）

罗兴亚难民正在考虑利用区块链型技术，解决他们现有的最大问题之一：缺乏官方认可的身份。

几十年来，穆斯林少数民族在其祖国缅甸被剥夺了公民身份，一直是残暴暴力活动的目标，并且暴力活动于一年前的本周达到高潮。由佛教民兵领导的“清理行动”使超过70万罗兴亚人越过边境进入孟加拉国，但是他们没有护照或官方身份证。

此后，缅甸政府同意将罗兴亚人接回，但却拒绝给予他们公民身份。许多罗兴亚人不想回归缅甸去面对没有家庭没有身份的生活。这场日益严重的危机促使Muhammad Noor和他的项目团队试图寻找一种数字化方案来解决难题。

“为什么像银行或政府这样的集中化机构拥有我的身份，”总部设在吉隆坡的罗兴亚社区负责人Noor说。“决定我是我的人又是谁？”

Noor正在试图基于区块链技术使用数字身份证，来帮助马来西亚，孟加拉国和沙特阿拉伯的罗兴亚人获得银行和教育等服务。希望成功的试验能够建立一个造福整个东南亚社区的系统。

根据该项目计划，区块链数据库用于记录个人数字身份证，一旦难民进行了测试，验证结果显示他是真正的罗兴亚人，就可以发给该难民个人身份证。

Noor的目标是让罗兴亚人居住的国家能够使用一种弹性系统，来重新赋予难民的公民身份，从而允许他们获得社会计划，法律权利，教育和医疗保健。在这个阶段，罗兴亚项目的主要目标是解决无国籍人民面临的最突出问题：金融排斥。

Noor的团队是一群全球各地难民和无国籍人士组成，他们利用了区块链技术的力量来恢复他们的身份。

区块链的概念来自数字货币比特币，它通过将交易分组为10分钟长的块来跟踪货币在其生态系统中的流动，每个块与一系列交易中的每个先前块都密不可分。

由于这些区块创建和链接的规则，它们可以作为谁拥有什么的不可变记录，即使没有任何中央权限验证。分布式且不可信的数据库的属性已被证明对除电子货币以外的其他用途也很有潜力，区块链初创公司现在可以提供从云计算到虚拟交易卡的所有服务。

区块链近年来在人道主义者群体中受到欢迎，慈善机构利用它来廉价转移资金并向难民提供援助。

在第一次海湾战争期间，Tufic Al Rjula的出生证明在科威特被摧毁。Al Rjula曾在荷兰难民营生活了两年，遇到了1000多名其他“隐形的”男人，女人和儿童，他们的身份证明文件也被毁或无法核实。

多年以后，Al Rjula亲身经历了出生证，驾驶执照和学位等集中式纸质身份证很容易丢失，伪造或滥用的情况，他与Jimmy Snoek共同创办了获奖的初创公司Tykn。 Tykn的使命宣言是为所有人提供“自我主权身份”。

原文

Rohingya turn to blockchain to solve identity crisis

Rohingya refugees are turning to blockchain-type technology to help address one of their most existential threats: lack of officially-recognised identity.

Denied citizenship in their home country of Myanmar for decades, the Muslim minority was the target of a brutal campaign of violence by the military which culminated a year ago this week. A "clearance operation" led by Buddhist militia sent more than 700,000 Rohingya pouring over the border into Bangladesh, without passports or official ID.

The Myanmar government has since agreed to take the Rohingya back, but are refusing to grant them citizenship. Many Rohingya do not want to return and face life without a home or an identity. This growing crisis prompted Muhammad Noor and his team at the Rohingya Project to try to find a digital solution.

"Why does a centralised entity like a bank or government own my identity,"says Noor, a Rohingya community leader based in Kuala Lumpur. "Who are they to say if I am who I am?”

Using blockchain-based technology, Noor, is trialling the use of digital identity cards that aim to help Rohingya in Malaysia, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia access services such as banking and education. The hope is that successful trials might lead to a system that can help the community across southeast Asia.

Under the scheme, a blockchain database is used to record individual digital IDs, which can then be issued to people once they have taken a test to verify that they are genuine Rohingya.

Noor's goal is to give Rohingya the power to reclaim their identities with a resilient system that their host countries will recognise, allowing them access to social programmes, legal rights, education and healthcare. At this stage, the Rohingya Project's main objective is to address the most prominent issue facing stateless peoples: financial exclusion.

Noor's team is one of a group of refugees and stateless peoples around the globe who are harnessing the power of blockchain technology to reclaim their identities.

The concept of the blockchain comes from the digital currency bitcoin, which tracks the movement of money around its ecosystem by grouping transactions into 10 minute-long blocks, each of which is inextricably linked to every previous block in a chain of transactions going back to the currency's creation.

Because of how those blocks are created and linked, they can serve as an immutable record of who owns what, even without any central authority verifying the network as a whole. That property – the idea of a decentralised, "trustless" database – has proved appealing to uses beyond e-money, with blockchain startups now offering everything from cloud computing to virtual trading cards.

It has gained popularity among humanitarians in recent years, with charities using it to transfer money cheaply and disburse aid to refugees.

Tufic Al Rjula's birth certificate was destroyed in Kuwait during the first Gulf war. Living for two years in a Dutch refugee camp as he worked through the asylum process, Al Rjula met more than 1,000 other "invisible"men, women and children whose identifying documents were either destroyed or unverifiable.

Years later, having personally experienced how centralised, paper-based IDs such as birth certificates, drivers licences and degrees can easily be lost, forged or misused, Al Rjula co-founded award-winning startup Tykn with Jimmy Snoek. Tykn's mission statement is to provide "self-sovereign identity to all".

文章编辑：小雨