Blockchain & Legal Identification Gaps - Aleksejs Ivashuk

Transcript

[Music] Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Uh so as you could probably tell already I work in human rights field. I don't work in the blockchain uh sphere but we see that uh it is already very re relevant in our line of work. We see that uh the people we work with stateless people that are already beginning to use blockchain technology to overcome some of the barriers that they face. uh but we see a lot of things go wrong. There's a lot of good intention uh by blockchain actors to do good to have public good to have value ad but uh unfortunately due to how they're not really familiar with the

dynamics of uh human rights or the context different contexts that they're working in we see uh a lot of things go really wrong and it's a really clear example of how you can pave a hell from good intentions. So uh this presentation will uh focus on framing a problem. A lot of people don't even know about some of these big issues that exist in the world. uh and so substantial amount of time I'll I'll do that so you'll have a clearer picture of what are the problems uh that uh some of the most vulnerable populations in the world face and then in the latter half of the presentation I'll also describe how there's already solutions uh that are not theoretical

that are already in practice and I will uh discuss also uh some challenges to these solutions but of course I'll also go into some details about some harm that we see uh on the ground um uh by malicious actors. So let's cover with uh let's start covering just framing the problem. So this is something that people don't know about. Uh the World Bank estimates there's at least a billion people in the world who don't have any legal identity whatsoever. So in the eyes of the law they don't exist. In the eyes of the government they don't exist. uh and it is a huge issue. Many of these people are children. So if they're born in a

country, they're oftenimes not given a birth certificates, not not even uh they're not given the legal existence. And we would like to say like well the child still exists, right? So if a child is born, we're still going to treat it as a human being and they'll have access to human rights, right? Because human rights are human rights. But that's not how it works. We're all pro products of our environment and our environment is the state. So if we're not seen by the state, that child will not have access to any human rights whatsoever. No education, no health care, no employment, no marriage, no movement, no documents. And so you can imagine um you know the kind of problem is actually you

don't have to imagine if you want to experiment you know try going to going about your life without having any legal identity or any documents whatsoever. You're going to find it impossible to do so. Um so aside from the 1 billion people uh who don't have any legal identity whatsoever um and by the number the numbers are also estimates so it's possible that it's even more than that. Uh we do have on top of that number uncountable millions who have what's called degraded forms of legal identity.

So there are people who are like me who hold non-citizenship or subcitizenship or alien passports. So their government may actually recognize by fact that they're nationals of the country but legally they don't want them to have the same rights. So I'll give you an example from history um you know because of uh many European countries having been colonial powers when you're a colonial power you take over a territory and that territory becomes equal part of your home territory but the do the people on that extension of the territory become equal citizens? Of course not. So you have uh development of subscitizenships and um and then people think that this is a

thing of a past. It's not. So there's millions of people uh who hold subsitizenship to this day. I have some examples. This is not a complete list. So the UK has six subsitizenship categories. There's millions of people who hold these subsitizenship categories. And then uh when decolonization was happening uh UK started to uh implement laws u basically restricting more and more restricting the rights of these subsitizens. Uh these were basically former colonial subjects that were moved around by the British Empire. Um and uh their right to come to the UK was decoupled from their citizenship. So they're British citizens but they don't have the right to move to

the UK. They don't have political rights. they don't have many of the essential rights that actually define citizenship. So they're only citizens in name only. Thus the term subscitizens. Um and then I'll throw in a few more examples. So Estonian and Latian non-citizens. So Estonian, Latia, Lithuanian were promising to their minorities if you support independence from the Soviet Union, you will be given access to uh equal nationality rights. Only Lithuania fulfilled that promise. Estonia and Latvia created a nonitizenship status. So, uh, Latia, for instance, claims that, well, it's the same thing as citizenship. They have the same rights as citizens, but they do everything in their power to make sure that's not true. So, uh, you have very interesting political dynamics with

these statuses. And I'll I'll use a few more here. American Samoans are a classical example because US when it was conquering islands in the Pacific, uh, it didn't want to grant uh, these people the same rights because they were seen as people of other color. And then, you know, there was serious racist um uh theories that unfortunately are alive to this day are not going away. But basically, they gave him uh they said that these people will be American nationals, but they're not going to be citizens. Uh and to this day, American Samoans have this status where they're not allowed to move to the mainland US and they're uh not allowed to vote. they don't not allowed a lot of essential

rights of of citizens, but they're possibly the most privileged stateless people in the world um or subsitizens uh because they actually are um they don't have to pay federal taxes and they can travel to 119 different countries in the world. So that's actually that's actually probably the best you can have as a subscitizen or uh as a stateless person. Uh and then of course we have uh Palestinians, Rohingyas and rec quite recently Assam. Um that's the last example I I'll cover here. um uh are some people in in India because of the rise of um Hindu nationalism uh there are m Muslim minority uh in India and then uh the government of India decided

well you know we never like these people and we will uh tell them to prove that they were from India before 1954 I believe and so it's a way of playing around with legal identification papers they basically put the onus on these people to prove that they're from India uh as a way to decouple their right to to equal citizenship. Uh so these are just some examples uh some of the more prominent ones u but by no means the only ones. Uh so I have some example here uh from this this one is from my colleague of how degraded form of legal IDs look like.

This is actually not uh exactly degraded form of legal identification but it's something else that the governments sometimes do to uh to oppress uh certain minority groups. Um so this is a list of family members of my colleague and what happens every year in Myanmar uh the authorities come to the family house and if anybody is not present they cross them out from the list and from that point on that person doesn't legally exist. uh and so and then they they can pretty much do anything with that person because they don't legally exist. And you know we even have historical cases where uh courts ruled well you can can't really harm a stateless person because

they don't legally exist. So that's why in 1930s and 1940s in central Europe you could pretty much do anything to the minorities. Uh it was all legal like but in Nazi Germany because you don't legally exist. You don't have any protection. your only protection that you have is your nationality because you're belong to a state. Uh it's not because you're human and we still have a long way to go to have international law actually have any enforcement or meaning in terms of um you know being more than just on a piece of paper. Uh so the other ID yeah it's also from uh the same colleague. Uh the document on the left here, it's the

special document for uh permission to move from a town to another town, like just to transit, to move, to have the right to to travel. So we're not talking about like outside of the country. So in in uh Israel there's an sorry not Israel, occupied West Bank, it's the same sort of thing. They issue special papers as a permission to for you to move between villages or between towns. So even if you're in your own country, you need to have a right to move, you know, from Prague to Bruno or something like that. So these are the kind of IDs that are issued or documents. And then um the ID on the right, that's a temporary uh temporary ID where there's emphasis

that this person is not a citizen of Myanmar and does not have the rights of a citizen of Myanmar. But they use these IDs to basically track people and know who they are and um come get them whenever they feel like it. And then the next one you might uh you find this person familiar. Uh it's me. Uh so um yeah I mean Latia when became independent it uh decided not to issue equal uh nationality papers. It said don't worry we're going to create some separate but equal uh status. Um and the Latvian government insists that we are nationals by fact in Latin language.

There's a term that encompasses um us the minorities from there. So my family is uh ethnically Latin Ukrainian. Um but uh yeah onethird of the country all of a sudden found themselves with this kind of legal ID. Uh now what's very interesting is that uh according to the Latvian law and constitutional court we cannot be called aliens or foreigners uh because our only legal bond our only legal connection is to Latia. We have no other legal connection.

Um but in our primary form of legal identification they use these terms contradicting their own law contradicting their own constitutional court. Uh and we actually in my line of work we had we communicate communicated with the Latian government and said like well we know this is kind of an awkward issue for you. You know you don't like the international pressure on this. Could you get rid of these terms because they're not in line with your law or your public statements? and they said, "Oh, this is something lost in translation. This is the weakness of French and English languages. So, you know, you know, we're not going to do anything about it." So, it's very interesting how uh you know, acrobatics are done in language uh with state actors. Uh and of course, the whole

point of it is to avoid accountability. And then the next uh thing highlighted here is my nationality xxx. It basically means undefined. So often times it will not even say stateless for stateless people because that will require the state to take accountability and give rights to the stateless person. So often times they have other categorizations as a way as a way to avoid that accountability. Uh so fun fact is that I actually collected all the designations uh xxxo and xxa. XXA basically means that you are officially determined stateless by some state actor and I was determined stateless in Switzerland. Um and so it's it's uh actually quite mind mindboggling

to go through all these designations. Um the last thing I want to point out is uh of course that uh I was born there. My uh parents are from Latvia. My mother's side. We don't actually know how far history extends our roots extend in in Latvia. Uh more than a hundred years for sure, but we don't know. um because during World War I, World War II, uh a lot of records uh were not kept safely and the onus is always on the individual even if it was the fault of the state to not keep the records. So that's something to keep in mind actually for all of us in the room. If something goes wrong, the onus is on you to fix the problem that uh bureaucracies make. Um so uh yes, the last things I want to

mention about framing the problem. So the quite essential thing to keep in mind is that proof of identity means access to rights. If you don't have proof of identity, if you don't have um such thing as nationality, these things are the gateways to your rights. So without these things, you're nothing. Okay? And that's why uh for many status people in the world, for many people who have the greatest forms of national nationality or ids, uh it's hell on earth. You know, you your life is is extreme difficulty mode and uh it's not advisable. Many, you know, many of these people just give

up or they um uh they hope to become refugees. Um which is very interesting because everybody can understand who refugees are. Um, and it's easier, I think, for people to um, uh, to have access to rights when you're a refugee. So, it's actually quite crazy that for many status people in the world or those without IDs, um, they oftenimes can't leave the countries that are uh, stripping um, them of their rights. And so, if there's a conflict or war, it's like a golden ticket for these people to become refugees. Um but of course it's not going to be easy for them because again if they don't have legal IDs if

they get out of the country the world doesn't exactly welcome them right so again the lessons from 1930s4s and 50s was that the world didn't really welcome these refugees that were forced out of their countries and actually there were push backs back into places like Nazi Germany where these people all of a sudden ended up being in concentration camps. Um although that was not the plan originally because the plan was to push them out but the world didn't care to welcome these people. Okay. So um one another thing that's very important to point out that uh none of you own your identity. If you open your passport doesn't matter what country it's from. It will say that very clearly the owner of this passport is the

government not you. People don't give it much f. But that basically means that the government has absolute total monopoly on issuing legal identity and owning it. You have 0% ownership of your identity proof. So that is all nice is okay as long as the government is nice and rosy and okay. But no government can guarantee to you what government will come in in the future and what kind of policies or theories they will have or what kind of hair color do they want you to have or what kind of race they want you to have or what kind of political views they want you to have. So uh we see a lot of people uh have their legal

uh ids canled or degraded or they become denationalized because they politically descent. Right now um recent example from Bellarus like in 2020 people took to the streets because you know they just got fed up with fraudulent elections and as per usual government cracked down half a million of these people fled and the government of Belerus said we're going to make these people stateless. And they did it in a very clever way. They said like, "Okay, if these people want to renew their documents, they have to come back to Bellers, but they're going to only do it in Bellis. You can connect the dots what that means, right?" And the EU said to its member states, "Don't allow these people to become undocumented or stateless." But, you know, nobody knows

about this topic. Nobody really is doing anything about the topic. And the EU member states are not exactly keen to make these people their own citizens or given permanent residents even. So it's it's a huge issue to this day. Um but the key uh thing is that when and I think a lot of these governments they don't do this even on purpose. They don't do it even necessarily by design. We make it just so easy for them to uh to to abuse their powers that they just do it sometimes as a knee-jerk reaction. Right? So if you have absolute authority to get rid of your political opposition by just cancelling their papers, wouldn't you want to do it? So

that's a actually a very dangerous lesson that we never seem to learn is that when you have um absolute monopolies or absolute powers, they tend to corrupt quite effectively. And that basically means lack of accountability. And uh we can expect uh the same legal frameworks that create these problems to to resolve it. And that's uh I think going to uh allow me to move into the next point about why we're looking into um Oh yes, and then of course I have even more examples, but I'll just bring up a Venezuela here. I already brought up a couple of these. So in Venezuela,

um you probably know about the mess going on there, but if you're a journalist or somebody who politically descends nowadays, you find yourself going to the airport and you have the passport. It's not, you know, cancelled, you know, taken away. Uh but uh these people are being told in the airport all of a sudden, oh yeah, yeah, your passport got cancelled digitally. Um and we have a serious problem in modern technology being combined with absolute certain powers of state uh to the point where you know it creates serious abuse that nobody can have answers to for. Uh and

so you know Venezuela has absolute monopoly to issue documents to its own citizens and it can cancel them at any point and now they can do it digitally uh and you will not even know about it until it's a surprise to you and we see this is going to be a more common thing throughout the world because I think yeah it's it's quite um quite of interest for many governments to use new technology in whichever way they want to uh uh to uh fulfill the interest that they pursue. And as I made the point already, it's important to keep in mind that uh the way things are, the onus is always on you whenever something goes

wrong, even if it's not malicious. So, uh, we have different examples, but one I'll bring up one in from Ukraine because parts of Ukraine are now occupied by Russia. And some Ukrainians, they don't have their papers because, you know, they had to escape really quickly or because their building was um burned or destroyed. um and they're having a difficulty u reestablishing their identity or their proof of nationality because the Ukrainian government is saying well you know you the onus is on you to prove who you are. Um and in order to do that you have to go for instance to archives but if archives are an occupied

territory what are you going to do? But the uh government's response is like well it's not our problem. It's just our monopoly with no accountability. So that's a serious issue and uh the onus um is it's important to keep in mind is always on us. So why blockchain? Well, we already see uh solutions as stateless people as those who lack legal IDs. We or have degraded forms of it. We already see it uh in such things as uh banking. So if you go to a bank, what do they ask you? Legal IDs or especially nationality, right?

And we have a large-scale project with some of our law firm partners because we see a lot of shady practices by banks, financial institutions where they're actually supposed to open up accounts to refugees or exiles or status people, but they have so much power to decide who their clients are. They're willing to not open accounts uh and even violate anti-discrimination regulations and laws. And they have that power. So a lot of refugees, exiles, stateless people and so on so forth cannot have a bank account not because they don't have the right to it. Uh it's just how power dynamics are and uh the banks have a lot of say beyond the law. And as one bank

staff put it, we know it's against the law, but it's our policy. It's a direct quote from one of the staff, one of the stateless person that we interviewed. Um and so we have a long way to go but the good news is that a lot of status people already find uh some solution opening a crypto wallet. You can be your own bank. You don't have to keep the money under the mattress. Uh another um area where we're finding solutions archiving. So in places like Myanmar the government is not just trying to physically erase the people and you know forcibly u relocate them or displace them. uh key thing is that they're also trying to go after the legal IDs of these people of the past.

They're trying to destroy these documents because these documents serve as proof that these people have belonged in the past in the territory and the Rohhinga for instance. So to cut the story short in 1982 military jive takes over and they can make a list of acceptable ethnicities. 160 ethnicities make the list. I think I believe it's like 30 or 40 didn't make the list and Rohingya are the biggest group of them. And so it's of interest for the government to destroy the proof of the Rohingya that they have roots to the country and those roots extend as far back as 400 500 years. Um and so it's quite important that we now have uh decentralization and blockchain um and our partner partner up with file coil

coin for instance so that Rohingya can preserve their collective identity in a secure way beyond the reach of abusive governments. Uh and of course uh what's really of interest to us strong interest to us is the possibility of decentraliz identification. So, as I mentioned, you know, none of us own our own proof identity right now. We think it's a very good idea for everybody to have a plan B in case your own government is not going to be so nice in the future, whether by collapse of uh the regime or whether people voting for crazy businessmen who want to see the world burn. Uh it

doesn't matter. So um we we see that it's quite important to to have that option. Uh and the good news is that uh you know the in theoretically there's uh there's uh plenty of room for that development. Um but uh we already see that development and there's already the centralization identification projects. But we find it very disturbing that a lot of these actors blockchain actors who do they go to when they want to partner up on their projects? They don't go to the people who stand to benefit the most from the technology. They like to go to the governments or the corporations and say like, "Hey, you know, we're we want to do this project

with you." And we already see a lot of harm coming out of that. Um, in that it's a top- down approach that completely ignores the experience of people that it's supposed to help. And we uh that's why it's quite important for um for uh and I know I'm running out of time. That's why I'm trying to think like what I should really focus on. It's quite important two points here like to for blockchain technology to keep to its original philosophy of decentralization because it's going to be very scary and very detrimental if uh centralized powers authoritarian powers in particular are able to um get control of this technology to uh

pursue uh you know their pro their programs of discrimination and human rights violations. And we already see a lot of authoritarian governments getting into this game. And uh what that will mean for surveillance and um you know with immutability and um and various aspects of blockchain technology. It will be quite disturbing um you know what uh what the detrimental impact will be. So it's quite essential uh to talk to the affected people who are harmed by such practices. Uh but it's also important to keep in mind that there needs to be a lot of uh sort of uh stubborn uh dedication to the

decentralized philosophy of uh blockchain. And um I think I'll stop uh there with this point. Thank you very much. Time flew by really fast. Uh thank you for your attention. Some questions. First thing I have a quick comment is that actually um the problem some of the problems that you mentioned with the bank account it doesn't happen only to people who are refugees etc. Even if you're just a migrant an expat that has happened to me that I cannot open a bank account in my own country and supposedly I should be able to do it but they don't let you they

don't say why they they just they see that your address is in another country and just they don't want to do it. Okay, my two questions. So, first I it's a bit personal, but I wonder that can you travel? Do you have a European Union passport? And then the second one is what do you recommend as a as a contingency as a as a plan B? Right. As a should we try to get a second citizenship? Yeah, absolutely. And I'll start at the end there. Uh that's what a lot of rich people are doing already, right? If you have a lot of money, you have more options. So there's cship by investment programs. More than 100 countries in the world have migration by investment programs, but a lot of people can't afford it. And if you don't give the right to people like salesless

people to work or refugees or exiles and so on, they're not going to gather the money to buy their way out of that horrible situation they're in. Uh but in terms of uh your question on how how do I travel? So that's a funny thing is that Latian says that we basically have the same rights, but there's a big difference between how many countries that Latvian citizens can travel to and how many countries we can travel to. So Latvian citizens outside of EU. Well, we're we're EU natives, so it would be awkward for EU to not allow us to travel uh within the EU, but even there there's a difference because I'm not supposed to be outside of Latia for more than 90 days. So, ironically, I have to go out of EU to stop the ticker or be in countries like um uh oh, sorry, outside

of Shenhen area or or being countries where I have certain residences and luckily I'm one of the lucky ones that has residences for the ticker to not uh work. Uh so, there's a big difference, but we're given as you saw the Latan non-citizen passport. I got denied boarding. I am put in detention a lot. I'm harassed a lot. And people don't really understand like how can I have such strong roots in Latia and be from Latia and my ancestors are from there but I'm not given the same rights, right? So by fact I'm a national but legally I'm not. So yeah. Did I miss anything? But the passport is an EU passport. The passport is EU pass but

it's a nonit just like with American Samoans. non-citizen, right? But that's not the biggest problem we have. The biggest problem is that they translated that terminology into English as alien passport, which is not in line with their own laws. So, but that's to create difficulty for us. It's actually it would be a win-win for everybody if they would just stop if they would actually fulfill their words and we would have the same rights. Uh but you know a lot of these things are not based on rational grounds like discrimination, racism, xenophobia, ethnophobia it's not rational things right.

So thank you Alex a thank