Blockchain’s Potential in Addressing Statelessness

The emergence of blockchain technology is creating solutions to key issues that stateless people face. Stateless people and their communities are already discovering relief through blockchain, being able to be their own bank via cryptocurrency, incentivising community building with crypto tokens, using blockchain-built governance, and developing options for identification where there were none. Despite the promise that blockchain technology brings with it, there are notable challenges and dangers. There is an issue with how technology providers tend to be acquiescent to state authorities, rather than the vulnerable groups that stand to benefit the most from blockchain development. Harm may come from failing to receive input from the vulnerable groups, while incorporating from authorities entrenched or new discriminatory practices in regard to ethnicity, religion, origin, gender, nationality or lack thereof. To avoid this, stronger connections must be built between the blockchain sector and its most vulnerable users, to help develop technology on a fair and equitable basis.

Statelessness compared to other forms of forced displacement

Stateless people are among the most vulnerable and overlooked groups in the world, lacking basic human rights, including identification, freedom of movement, political rights, employment, education, and access to banking. Indeed, nationality remains a gateway to enjoying any rights. As Hannah Arendt famously wrote from her own experience of statelessness, nationality is a ‘right to have rights’.[1] Lacking it leaves a person in a limbo of vulnerability.

Statelessness is a particularly vicious form of displacement, whereby one is made legally invisible in one’s own home, not welcome to stay and not exactly welcome to leave either. Being stateless should not be confused with being a refugee. The latter, for the most part, enjoy rights inherent in having a nationality and generally have an easier time of having such rights recognised, including in respect to international protection. Interestingly, the internationally recognised legal term ‘refugee’ originally derived from the experience of over 2 million refugees who were rendered stateless when the Soviet Union was established.[2] German minorities rendered stateless in the 1930s and 1940s were also in large part refugees, explaining why Hannah Arendt saw the two terms as intertwined.[3] Over time, however, these terms diverged in circumstance and common use; while the term ‘refugee’ became better known, the term ‘stateless’ became obscure. The fact that the stateless have no state actor that may put their interests on any agenda helps to explain this obscurity.

Most contemporary cases of statelessness are ‘in-situ’.[4] In other words, most stateless people are stuck in the home domains that rendered them stateless, unable to become refugees and enjoy any refugee rights. State actors that manufacture statelessness tend to avoid calling this by its name, to avoid responsibility for it, worsening the information gap, visibility of the problem, and obstructing approaches toward its resolution. This can explain why 22 countries with mass statelessness do not have reliable data on this issue.[5] Since there is no authority above the state level in regard to legality—a monopoly that state actors enjoy absolutely—the tactic of any state actor in manipulating legal language to avoid responsibility is fairly effective. (This is a common state actor tactic that plays out in various ways, not just regarding statelessness, such as how Russia adamantly avoids calling its war in Ukraine by its proper name.) Using their advantages in law and information, state actors that manufacture statelessness en masse have a strong preference towards keeping the matter obscure, finding creative ways to obstruct the topic and circumvent international law standards relating to it.[6]

Unlike what the media and films would make us believe, statelessness is not an accident wherein people fall through invisible cracks of legal contradictions or bureaucratic mishaps. Although such forms of statelessness exist, such as in some of the former Soviet Republics after the collapse of the USSR, statelessness is usually intentional, not accidental.[7] As the next section will discuss, much has to do with abuses that derive from the state-actor monopolies on legal identity documentation, notions of domestic belonging, and freedom of movement. All of these are tied to the modern predilection for fawning over nation-state sovereignty and its exercise of power.

Lingering state actor absolute powers and monopolies

It is never a good idea to place absolute monopoly or power in human hands. When we do allow it to happen, we tempt human frailties, asking for trouble. Despite the historic successes in the decentralisation of political power in countries such as Britain, the United States, and France, many aspects of social life remain centralised monopolistically in the hands of state actors. The monopoly on violence is not the only monopoly that state actors hold. To this day, there is no competition to state authority on questions of freedom of movement (post-WWI),[8] legal identification, criminality, and notions of rootedness and belonging. None of this, despite what the state actors would wish us to believe, is immutable and written in nature.

Recent winds of technological change have brought serious challenges to some of the monopolies that state actors traditionally held—such as in the media, data, and currency (the advent of blockchain and cryptocurrency made decentralisation possible for the latter). Although state actors remain dominant in all of above spheres, their dominance has recently begun to encounter a healthy dose of competition, from both private enterprises and individuals. Authoritarian state actors bristle at the thought and struggle to find ways to regain control. As soon as they find ways to regain some of that control (eg internet censorship), there appear new ways to circumvent it (eg VPN). Blockchain also began to play a role in this regard, namely in decentralising website namespaces outside the control of any single entity, along with other related uses, allowing for censorship-resistant domains.[9]

Statelessness itself in large part arises because of the abuse of power of two key state actor monopolies: 1) the notion of belonging to a territory; and 2) the issuance of legal identification. Both are still firmly in the grasp of state actors. Minorities are particularly vulnerable to misuses and abuses of these monopolies; it should be no surprise that 75% of the world’s stateless people are minorities on their own home territories, where they are made to feel unwelcome through the deprivation of nationality.[10] In other words, they are made to feel like they do not belong, and are not issued the same documentation as those who are branded as citizens/nationals.[11]

Discrimination is at the very root of statelessness. People largely become stateless as punishment for who they are rather than for what they did: a person or their offspring can be deprived of a right to nationality simply for having a different ethnicity, perceived race or origin, religion, or gender (24 countries still do not allow women to pass on a nationality).[12] At the same time, the punitive infliction of statelessness, such as for political dissent, is also widespread. This form of statelessness was recurrent during the Cold War,[13] and very recently has seen a sharp resurgence in Bahrain, Nicaragua, Belarus, Uganda, Venezuela, and numerous other countries, including Western democracies.[14] People are increasingly being stripped of their nationality for having dissenting political views, being emphatically told that they do not belong for having such views. This goes hand-in-hand with revocation or refusal of renewal of legal identification.

A serious alternative option to state actors’ monopoly in issuing legal identification is yet to arise. Nansen passports issued by the League of Nations, purposely designed for the flight of stateless refugees between 1922 and 1942, are a thing of the past.[15] It is far from certain that something like that could work in the 21st century, given the obscurity of statelessness, how unfavourable the political and socio-economic realities are for helping such people, and dependence on state actor cooperation in launching such a project (the UN, after all, is a forum for state actors). There are so-called ‘certificates of identity’, otherwise known as ‘aliens’ passports’, but these have limited use, are poorly known in application, and, most importantly, still depend on the state actors for issuance.

As things stand, individual state actors and their appendages are the owners and controllers of our legal documentation. All passports have wording reflecting this fact: that it is the issuing government that is the owner of the passport, not the holder. Interestingly, the only exception is in the case of Queens and Kings of England, who do not need a passport because the British passports are issued in their names as heads of state. But even this exception is still perfectly in line with the state actor monopolisation of legal identification.

The 20th century saw a growing centralisation of the power of state actors to identify and control the population, increasing to that end the use of identity documentation.[16] Increasingly, identity documentation became mandatory while its issuance did not become guaranteed or irrevocable.[17] Abuses of that centralisation of power resonate to this day, threatening human rights and domestic and international stability, with statelessness being an extreme form of that abuse. In the 21st century, governments in numerous countries around the world are increasingly targeting political dissidents, minorities, and other vulnerable groups, depriving them of identity documentation and putting them on a path to statelessness. A rising number of state actors, especially in the West, have introduced, brought back, expanded, or contemplated denaturalization laws.[18] The increasing insecurity of ‘belonging’ to only one state actor can partly explain a surge in the purchasing of additional citizenships among the rich. But very few can afford such protection, spotlighting the ethical perversion and inherent inequalities of state actor monopolies.[19] Protection, pathways to residence and even citizenship are sold by state actors, but when it comes to fulfilling the values that state actors preach so much about (human rights, justice, equality, democracy, etc), they treat the most vulnerable and persecuted populations very differently in these pathways.

There is an urgent need for an accessible ‘Plan B’ for everyone, since there can never be guarantees of whether any government may turn abusive in the future. Governments are poorly positioned to provide such guarantees to their own nationals: any legal safeguards (if any are put in place) can be rewritten by a new political power, whether it comes in by force or elections. It does not help that the international instruments designed to protect human rights, such as the UN agencies, remain ineffective, while tensions between national groups attempting to dominate remain unresolved.[20] New, creative solutions are needed to match or, better yet, outmatch the creativity of state actors in manufacturing problems like statelessness. Blockchain and its novel contributions have the potential solutions.

Blockchain’s potential in addressing statelessness

The 21st century brought with it increasing decentralisation on the back of a decentralised system that has no owner: the internet. Blockchain appeared next in that evolution with its decentralised validation system being a unique contribution. This breakthrough, nicknamed Internet 2.0, moves along the digital revolution from information access and content creation to the stage of democratised ownership, promising greater control over own data.[21] This new technology has many uses, most of which are untapped and difficult to imagine at this point of time. In terms of human rights, blockchain offers an opportunity to alleviate the dire effects of statelessness and other forms of forced displacement. It does so through the possibility of decentralised identification issuance, validation, and self-sovereignty, while also empowering the stateless in such areas as decentralised governance, financial inclusion, and access to the numerous other services where identification is required.

Application of blockchain technology in human rights is already here, with solutions for the stateless already being developed and implemented. One of the largest and better known of stateless groups, the Rohingya, have already started to enjoy the fruits of this development in a number of areas, leveraging technology to overcome barriers of exclusion. A case in point is the Rohingya Project, a stateless-led initiative using blockchain capabilities to experiment with alternatives to state actor monopoly in identification.[22] The project initiated a blockchain-based inventory archive to preserve vital records of Rohingya people, and launched R-Coin, a crypto token that encourages community service work in an informal economy setting.[23]

To advocate for blockchain technology and its responsible use, the Rohingya Project joined forces with Save My Identity[24] and CoalitionVE,[25] led by Venezuelans who have had problems accessing identity documentation due to malfeasance of Venezuela, and Apatride Network,[26] a stateless-led coalition in the EU. To that end, these four organisations of forcibly displaced people partnered up for a global advocacy project, Blockchain for Human Rights,[27] launched in April of 2024. The initiative connects blockchain actors to human rights, to help guide the development of blockchain technology toward intended good and away from causing harm—to fulfil the much-promoted goal in blockchain circles of ‘value-add’ to the world. Given that businesses tend to be more connected and acquiescent to state actors (including the ones that cause harm), it is a much-needed endeavour to recalibrate the imbalances of power through the sharing of knowledge, ground-level expertise, and connections.

Various charities and humanitarian organisations have also recognised the benefits of blockchain, its efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and ease of transactions. Working under difficult and volatile conditions where differences in performance can mean differences between life and death, they have been amongst the first to adopt the new technology to improve their own line of work to maximise impact.[28] More effective performance is particularly important during times of crises, when state-actor bureaucracies and old ways of doing things can be too slow, costly, and / or inapt. This explains why, during the turbulent initial months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the humanitarian sector turned to blockchain-built cryptocurrency rather than fiat, to directly and quickly provide much-needed cash assistance to Ukrainian refugees and internally displaced people. The success of the initiative led Carmen Hett, Treasurer of UNHCR, to conclude: ‘The question is now, how can we do more of this? Because we know it works’.[29]

The experience of vulnerable groups in Ukraine revealed how everything boils down to the question of identification in regard to access to human rights and humanitarian aid. There has been an incredible outpouring of aid to Ukrainian refugees after Russia invaded Ukraine, but some were left dangerously forsaken: Ukraine’s stateless people (many of whom are ethnic Ukrainians) have been unable to receive humanitarian aid and found it almost impossible to become refugees or even internally displaced. As reported by Ukrainian NGOs, it speaks disturbing volumes when Ukraine’s stateless make a decision to stay in a war zone, feeling ‘safer’ there, rather than face an outside the world with fear of having an inadequate form of identification or none at all.[30] This circumstance shows how state actors can fail in two respects to provide security to their own members: by failing to issue identification and prevent statelessness, then failing to recognise and resolve these issues. Both are rooted in the (mis)handling of identification.

Given that state actors have held a monopoly on legal identification, the onus is on them to provide it without leaving anyone out. Yet, according to the World Bank, one billion people in the world remain without legal identification.[31] Lack of identification means lack of access to basic human rights. It also amplifies the vulnerability of affected people and places them at the mercy of human traffickers, corrupt officials, exploitative employers, and other unsavoury characters. Any form of identification can be a lifeline in such circumstances, and certainly better than having nothing. Given their discriminatory behaviour, cooperation from the malicious state actors who cause statelessness should not be expected, only the opposite. The pattern is similar across the world in different forms of mass statelessness, where stateless people, minorities, and other vulnerable groups are issued inferior form of identification or none at all.

State actors struggle to adjust to the fast-pace, globalising, and multi-cultural nature of the 21st century. They continue to serve as opportune vessels for divisive ideologues, xenophobes, populists, and authoritarians (a problem that will unlikely be resolved, even for advanced democracies). Status-quo forms of documentation not only carry unnecessary risks and fragility, they are also vulnerable to state actor malpractices and irrational biases and discrimination. Blockchain-based systems of identification offer opportunities to address these critical flaws and can provide better data security in general, being notably more resilient to loss and forgery.[32]

No human enterprise should trust itself with absolute and monopolistic powers. State actors themselves need to be helped in maintaining a healthier environment in identification. That alternative is now tenable with blockchain technology. Whereas before an argument could have been made that the state actor is a guarantor of someone’s identity by way of a centralised validation system (similar to the logic in fiat currency), today decentralised blockchain technology allows a viable alternative in identification that is already being put to good use. It is resolving some key problems faced by the stateless and other forcibly displaced people, and has the potential to resolve statelessness itself.

Blockchain risks and hazards

New technology always brings with it a set of concerns and growing pains. Serious problems can arise if developers of that technology ignore the characteristics, problems, and needs of its users. If the users are vulnerable groups such as the stateless or other forcibly displaced people, the stakes are considerably higher. For blockchain and digitalisation in general there are serious concerns going forward regarding the potential importation of structural discrimination into their development. This is already happening in different corners of the world, when state actors with discriminatory practices are involved. If precautions are not taken, the new technology may further exclude the already marginalized groups by accepting and incorporating that discrimination, causing significant harm and undermining human rights for everyone. Better connection is needed between the blockchain enterprises and its most vulnerable users.

Akin to the rise of the internet, the learning curve is steep with blockchain, involving unpredictable missteps. In a decentralised system, there is no central authority to reset or restore private data keys, so the responsibility rests solely on the shoulders of the users to keep their ownership secure.[33] User negligence is relatively preventable, but problems like network outages, technical glitches, and hacking are more difficult to predict or prevent. They are a growing concern in blockchain that have no end in sight, involving numerous malicious actors eager to take advantage.[34] Hacking alone has caused widespread losses in billions of dollars over last several years, typically impacting crypto exchanges, wallets, and software. Blockchain itself being a more secure technology, hackers tend to find weaknesses in tools surrounding it, to that end utilising stolen passwords or private keys, keyloggers, phishing, and exploiting weak security protocols in software.[35] Blockchain’s still young yet complex development and continued dependence on other technology leaves a lot of room for the creativity of hackers and other cybercriminals. This is why so-called cold storage remains popular for avoiding these problems, ie, keeping data offline on a device like a USB stick or a disconnected hard disk drive.

Blockchain-based digital identification has its own concerns. The stronger a form of identification is made by immutability and logging of all the metadata, the more pressing the question of who controls that solution becomes. Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, a leading blockchain project that has its own cryptocurrency and is developing a national ID system in Ethiopia, put it bluntly: ‘[In authoritarian regimes], it makes no sense to build identity solutions or blockchain solutions because there’s a high probability that those solutions are going to be abused and weaponized against the population’.[36] It is horrifying to imagine how much worse discrimination and harm in various countries would be with state actor access and control of a blockchain-based identification system. As already emphasised, any state actor, no matter where and when, has a susceptibility toward authoritarian tendencies. It is naïve to assume that political winds do not change. No place is safe from these tendencies.[37]

Even if state actor takeover of blockchain is avoided, corporate monopolies can also be detrimental in harbouring an unhealthy concentration of power.[38] In their blind pursuit of profit, blockchain businesses are liable to overlook the harm that they may bring about without intending it. As Friedrich Nietzsche once put it, the banker, in the pursuit of narrow interests, functions by the same logic as a rock rolling down a hill. To the affected that suffer the consequences, it may make no difference whether harm comes from centralisation and malicious intent, callousness, or good intentions.

Decentralised identification built on blockchain can help mitigate a number of issues like accidental loss, data security, or even hacking, by developing a more secure, reliable way of identity verification. Ultimately, however, everything goes back to the question of decentralisation and ownership. It is a prevalent question in the development of blockchain, a tug of war between those who standby decentralisation and those that seek more centralisation for its various perceived advantages (however self-serving).

One of the biggest advantages of a decentralised system is its collusion resistance and, by its very definition, deterrence to monopolisation of power, political or otherwise. Viktor Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, concluded that:

it is much harder for participants in decentralized systems to collude to act in ways that benefit them at the expense of other participants, whereas the leaderships of corporations and governments collude in ways that benefit themselves but harm less well-coordinated citizens, customers, employees and the general public all the time.[39] 

That harm is magnified for those who are already on the margins of society, due to failures of centralised authority. At the end of the day, the good of blockchain depends on whether it will be able to maintain its decentralised nature.

Conclusion

It is important to recognise why forced displacement like statelessness exists and why uncountable millions suffer from it. Much has to do with the reality of how identification and notion of belonging are in a firm grasp of state actor monopoly, which is not always competent or benign.

The stateless, who have been made stateless by no fault of their own, are desperate for solutions that technology like blockchain can offer. For the time being, these solutions may not be a panacea to all the woes of a lack of nationality, but they can soften the heavy blow of statelessness and other forms of forced displacement by addressing their primary burdens. Stateless people themselves are already taking matters into their own hands to implement these solutions, partnering up with blockchain actors toward that end, strengthening their own communities, and opening a route to a more liveable life.

As with any technological advancement, there are shortcomings and dangers that need to be considered. In its current state, blockchain may not be for everyone, especially in light of its complexity and underlying risks in security gaps. Cybercriminals and other malicious actors are taking advantage of these complexities and gaps to their own benefit, tainting blockchain’s reputation. All of this serves as a deterrent for many, despite the noticeable advantages of the technology. This is why some in the humanitarian field are reluctant to use blockchain for fear of the repercussions that it could have in volatile environments like natural disasters or in conflict zones.[40] In such circumstances, the appetite is low for any additional risks associated with a technology that is still developing.

In the pursuit of managing risks, there is much talk of regulating blockchain, ie, of increasing state actor control over the technology. Not much is said, however, of how that coveted control is itself problematic. The biggest threat remains the propensity of state actors to abuse their powers. History offers plenty of disturbing examples of how state actors utilised new technology to commit mass atrocities and other ‘crimes’ (the notion of crime being itself monopolised by the state actors). Few of history’s examples are as poignant as that of Nazi Germany, a regime that has used modern technology to systematically kill and enslave its own minorities and others. That state’s monopoly in identification played a critical role in that regard, through denationalisation laws and with the infamous use of identification badges for the Jewish, Roma, political dissidents, and other ‘undesirables’.[41] Every state actor’s ultimate powerplay is the punitive stripping or degrading of identification. Deplorably, it is still relatively easy for state actors to do this, rationalised by entrenched deference to nation-state sovereignty.

Notions of belonging and the issuance of legal documentation are powerful tools that can shelter or break human lives. Effective preventative measures are lacking to make sure that such tools are not misused. Racism, xenophobia, sexism and other forms of discrimination will not disappear any time soon—if ever. Accordingly, they will continue to plague the socio-political nature of state actors, causing harm to the most vulnerable while leaving no guarantees who will be vulnerable next. This is all the more reason to mitigate these structural shortcomings by whatever means and opportunities possible, to support development of ‘Plan B’ alternatives to the current monopolies in place. There is a need for a healthier, more competitive environment in identification issuance, for which blockchain technology may help set the ground, in its various, competitive decentralised identification projects.

None of this is to say that state actors’ role in legal identification can or should be completely overwritten. Blockchain’s cryptocurrency already co-exists with current fiat structures, creating a competitive alternative and giving people more choice and autonomy, especially when the state actor system fails (as it often does). Decentralised identification through blockchain can utilise established practices to build on, but to achieve a true value-add to the world, it is imperative that blockchain maintain the decentralisation philosophy it has been built on, to avoid the same problems that it is meant to address. Toward that end, it will be important for blockchain developers to connect less to the state actors that manufacture problems like forced displacement, and more to those who suffer from these problems. Blockchain itself stands to gain, as the experience of these vulnerable users can justify the rise of blockchain technology, expanding the positive and life changing experiences that these users already began to have.

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Aleksejs Ivashuk

Aleksejs Ivashuk is the founder of Apatride Network, a coalition of stateless individuals, communities and stateless-led organisations working on addressing statelessness in the EU. He is also an associate member of European Network on Statelessness and serves on UNHCR's Advisory Board of organisations led by the forcibly displaced and stateless. In 2024, he co-founded the Blockchain for Human Rights consortium, bringing together stateless-led and exile-led coalitions to work together to advocate for responsible use of blockchain technology in digitization of identification.

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[1] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Random House 1951) chapter 9.

[2] Elizabeth White, ‘The Legal Status of Russian Refugees, 1921-1936’ (2017) 27(1) Comparativ. Zeitschrift fur Globalgeschichte und Vergleichende Gesellshaftsforschung 18-38.

[3] Arendt (n 1) chapter 9.

[4] ‘Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons’ (UNHCR, 1 June 2014) <https://www.unhcr.org/dach/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2017/04/CH-UNHCR_Handbook-on-Protection-of-Stateless-Persons.pdf> accessed 25 May 2024.

[5] ‘UNHCR Global Trends 2019’ (UNHCR, 1 May 2019) <https://www.unhcr.org/flagship-reports/globaltrends/globaltrends2019/> accessed 25 May 2024.

[6] Neha Jain, ‘Manufacturing Statelessness’ (2022) 116(2) American Journal of International Law 237-88. 

[7] ibid.

[8] White (n 2).

[9] Harry Kalodner et al, ‘An empirical study of Namecoin and lessons for decentralized namespace design’ (2015) <https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/publications/namespaces.pdf> accessed 25 May 2024.

[10] ‘Minorities, Discrimination and Statelessness’ (OHCHR, 1 October 2021) <https://www.ohchr.org/en/minorities/minorities-discrimination-and-statelessness> accessed 25 May 2024.

[11] There is an important distinction between the two terms that plays out differently in different countries. In some countries, such as Latvia and Estonia, stateless people are called ‘non-citizens’ but are allowed, as a blank formality, to declare a non-functional ‘nationality’ in their identity papers that is equivalent to an ethnicity rather than any nationality. In the United States, stateless American Samoans are also called ‘non-citizens’ but hold a status of being American nationals with some special rights, like not having to pay federal taxes. Generally, the terms ‘citizen’ and ‘national’ are used interchangeably in different countries, furthering confusion and lack of consistency.

[12] ‘Access to nationality for women and girls essential for achieving gender equality and development: UN expert’ (OHCHR, 3 October 2023) <https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/10/access-nationality-women-and-girls-essential-achieving-gender-equality-and> accessed 25 May 2024; (n 10).

[13] Julia Rose Kraut, Threat of Dissent: A History of Ideological Exclusion and Deportation in the United States (Harvard University Press 2023).

[14] Adam Taylor, ‘The practice of revoking citizenship was tainted. Not anymore’ Washington Post (Washington DC, 23 February 2023) <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/23/begum-uk-citizenship-nicaragua-bahrain/> accessed 25 May 2024.

[15] ‘The passion, vision and action of Fridtjof Nansen, humanitarian extraordinaire’ (UNHCR, 5 October 2022) <https://www.unhcr.org/th/en/39149-the-passion-vision-and-action-of-fridtjof-nansen-humanitarian-extraordinaire.html> accessed 25 May 2024.

[16] Jain (n 6).

[17] Brad Blitz and Caroline Sawyer (eds), Statelessness in the European Union: Displaced, Undocumented, and Unwanted (Cambridge University Press 2011).

[18] Audrey Macklin, ‘A Brief History of the Brief History of Citizenship Revocation in Canada’ (2021) 44(1) Manitoba Law Journal 425-455.

[19] Ayelet Shachar, ‘The Marketization of Citizenship in an Age of Restrictionism’ (2018) 32(1) Ethics and International Affairs 3-13.

[20] ibid.

[21] Jagjit Signgh, ‘How blockchain technology revolutionizes digital ownership?’ (Coin Telegraph, 1 December 2023) <https://cointelegraph.com/explained/how-blockchain-technology-revolutionizes-digital-ownership> accessed 25 May 2024.

[22] Matthew Allen, ‘Swiss blockchain platform gives Rohingya identities’ (Swiss Info, 4 April 2018) <https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/refugee-crisis_swiss-blockchain-platform-gives-rohingya-identities/44020630> accessed 25 May 2024.

[23] Saqib Sheikh, ‘The Invisible Man of the Visible World: How Blockchain Could Offer New Hope to Stateless Rohingya’ (Coin Telegraph, 18 May 2020) <https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/the-invisible-man-of-the-visible-world-how-blockchain-could-offer-new-hope-to-stateless-rohingya/> accessed 25 May 2024.

[24] ‘Save My Identity’ (Save My Identity) <https://savemyidentity.org/> accessed 25 May 2024.

[25] ‘Coalition for Venezuelans’ (Coalition for Venezuelans) <https://www.coalicionporvenezuela.org/> accessed 25 May 2024.

[26] ‘Apatride Network’ (Apatride Network) <https://apatride.eu/> accessed 25 May 2024.

[27] ‘Blockchain for Human Rights’ (Blockchain for Human Rights) <https://bchain4hr.com/> accessed 25 May 2024.

[28] Mathew Allen, ‘Charities and NGOs trial new technology to enhance performance’ (Swiss Info, 20 February 2018) <https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/blockchain-for-good_charities-and-ngos-trial-new-technology-to-enhance-performance/43907904> accessed 25 May 2024.

[29] Joel Khalili, ‘In Ukraine, Crypto Finds a Purpose’ (Wired, 15 March 2023) <https://www.wired.com/story/ukraine-crypto-refugee-aid/> accessed 25 May 2024.

[30] Aleksejs Ivashuk, Kanics Jyothi, and Sofiia Kordonets, ‘The forgotten victims of war: Ukraine’s stateless’ (2023) 72 Forced Migration Review 37-40 <https://www.fmreview.org/ukraine/ivashuk-kordonets-kanics/> accessed 25 May 2024.

[31] ‘Identification for Development Initiative’ (World Bank) <https://id4d.worldbank.org/about-us> accessed 25 May 2024.

[32] Alex Hern and Skot Thayer, ‘Rohingya turn to blockchain to solve identity crisis’ Guardian (London, 21 August 2018) <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/21/rohingya-turn-to-blockchain-to-solve-identity-crisis> accessed 25 May 2024.

[33] ‘Crypto custody: a private key to success’ (PwC, 4 November 2022) <https://www.pwc.ch/en/insights/digital/crypto-custody-a-private-key-to-success.html> accessed 25 May 2024.

[34] Florence G’sell and Florian Martin-Bariteau, ‘The Impact of Blockchains for Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law’ (Council of Europe, 15 November 2022) <https://www.coe.int/en/web/artificial-intelligence/-/the-impact-of-the-blockchains-for-human-rights-democracy-and-the-rule-of-law> accessed 25 May 2024.

[35] Kevin George, ‘The Largest Cryptocurrency Hacks So Far’ (Investopedia, 2 December 2023) <https://www.investopedia.com/news/largest-cryptocurrency-hacks-so-far-year/> accessed 25 May 2024.

[36] Elizabeth Renieris, ‘Why a Little-Known Blockchain-Based Identity Project in Ethiopia Should Concern Us All’ (Centre for International Governance Innovation, 7 December 2021) <https://www.cigionline.org/articles/why-a-little-known-blockchain-based-identity-project-in-ethiopia-should-concern-us-all/> accessed 25 May 2024.

[37] ibid.

[38] ibid.

[39] Vitalik Buterin, ‘The Meaning of Decentralization’ (Medium, 6 February 2017) <https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentralization-a0c92b76a274> accessed 25 May 2024.

[40] Allen (n 28).

[41] ‘Jewish Badge During the Nazi Era’ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (New York, 2 February 2016) <https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-badge-during-the-nazi-era> accessed 25 May 2024.