When a family flees a conflict zone or a natural disaster destroys a community overnight, the loss of physical documents — passports, birth certificates, land titles — can be as devastating as the crisis itself. Without proof of identity, displaced people cannot access food rations, healthcare, financial services, or legal protection. Across the world, an estimated one billion people lack any form of recognised identity, and displaced populations are disproportionately represented in that number. Digital identity technology is emerging as one of the most practical and transformative tools available to humanitarian organisations working to close this gap.
The Identity Gap in Humanitarian Crises
The scale of the problem is significant. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that over 117 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide by the end of 2023. For many, displacement means the immediate loss of documentation. A refugee arriving at a camp border may have nothing but the clothes they are wearing. Without identity verification, aid organisations struggle to prevent duplicate registrations, ensure equitable distribution of assistance, and protect individuals from exploitation and trafficking.
Traditional paper-based registration systems are slow, prone to fraud, and difficult to transfer between agencies. When a displaced person moves from one camp to another, or crosses an international border, their registration records often do not follow them. The result is a fragmented, inefficient system that fails the very people it is designed to serve.
Biometric Registration: Building a Portable Identity
Biometric technology — the capture and storage of unique physical characteristics such as fingerprints, iris patterns, and facial geometry — has become central to humanitarian identity programmes. UNHCR’s PRIMES (Population Registration and Identity Management EcoSystem) platform now uses biometric data to register and verify displaced individuals across more than 70 countries. When a registered refugee presents themselves at a distribution point, a fingerprint or iris scan confirms their identity in seconds, eliminating the need for paper documents and significantly reducing the risk of fraud.
The World Food Programme’s Building Blocks initiative, piloted in Jordan, used iris-scanning technology at supermarket checkouts in the Azraq refugee camp to allow Syrian refugees to pay for groceries directly from their WFP entitlement accounts. No cash, no card, no document — just a glance at a scanner. As MIT Technology Review reported, the system processed over 100,000 transactions and demonstrated that biometric payments could work reliably in a resource-constrained humanitarian setting.
Blockchain-Backed Identity: Giving People Control of Their Own Data
One of the most significant criticisms of centralised biometric databases is the question of data sovereignty. Displaced people have little say over how their biometric data is stored, shared, or used. A growing number of humanitarian technologists are exploring blockchain-based identity systems as an alternative, where individuals hold their own verifiable credentials rather than relying on a central authority to vouch for them.
The ID2020 Alliance, a public-private partnership, has worked with UNHCR and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to pilot digital identity linked to vaccination records for children in refugee settings. The system issues a portable, cryptographically secured credential that a child’s family can carry on a mobile device or a low-cost smart card. When the family moves, the credential moves with them and can be verified by any participating agency without needing to contact a central database.
Similarly, Everest and Telos have developed blockchain identity wallets designed for low-connectivity environments, allowing identity verification to function even in areas with intermittent internet access — a critical requirement in many displacement contexts.
The Challenges: Privacy, Consent, and Exclusion
Digital identity technology in humanitarian settings is not without its risks. Biometric databases, if breached or misused, can expose vulnerable populations to serious harm. In conflict settings, identity data held by one party could be weaponised by another. The Rohingya refugee crisis raised serious concerns after Human Rights Watch reported that biometric data collected by UNHCR had been shared with the Myanmar government — the very authority from which refugees had fled. UNHCR subsequently revised its data-sharing protocols, but the incident underscored the life-or-death stakes of data governance in humanitarian contexts.
Consent is another complex issue. Refugees and displaced people are rarely in a position to freely refuse biometric registration if doing so means losing access to food or shelter. Humanitarian organisations must grapple honestly with the power imbalance inherent in these systems and invest in robust data protection frameworks, independent oversight, and genuine community consultation.
There is also the risk of exclusion. Elderly people, individuals with disabilities, and those whose biometric features have been altered by injury or hard labour may not be reliably captured by standard biometric systems. Any digital identity programme must include fallback mechanisms to ensure that the most marginalised are not further excluded by the very technology designed to help them.
Looking Ahead: Interoperability and the Humanitarian Data Ecosystem
The next frontier for digital identity in humanitarian response is interoperability — the ability for identity records to be recognised and used across different agencies, governments, and service providers. Today, a displaced person may be registered separately with UNHCR, WFP, UNICEF, and a host of NGOs, each maintaining their own siloed database. Harmonising these systems, while maintaining strong data protection standards, would dramatically improve the efficiency and dignity of aid delivery.
Initiatives such as the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) and the OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data are working to establish common data standards and sharing protocols. The goal is not a single global database — which would carry unacceptable risks — but a federated ecosystem where verified credentials can be trusted across organisational boundaries.
Digital identity technology, implemented thoughtfully and with genuine respect for the rights and dignity of displaced people, has the potential to be one of the most impactful humanitarian innovations of this decade. The challenge is not primarily technical — the tools exist. The challenge is governance: ensuring that the systems built to protect vulnerable people do not, in the wrong hands, become instruments of harm.
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