Digital Identity for Refugees & Disenfranchised Populations: The “Invisibles” and Standards for Sovereign Identity

Digital Identity for Refugees & Disenfranchised Populations: The “Invisibles” and Standards for Sovereign Identity

Tuesday (Announced during Closing Circle)

Announced by: Drummond Reed for Jeffrey Aresty

Notes-taker(s): Jeff Aresty

Tags for the session - technology discussed/ideas considered:

Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps:

Link to paper:

It will be published in June but sharing link with IIW 28 now

A Note from Jeff Aresty with some background on how the paper was developed:

IBO will be issuing the attached white paper //bit.ly/digital-identity-refugees, Digital Identity for Refugees and Disenfranchised Populations: The “Invisibles” and Standards for Sovereign Identity in conjunction with the presentation we are making at the World Justice Forum.  The "Invisibles" is what led you (Joyce), Timothy and Phil to individually connect me with Manny, who traveled with me to Bangladesh in December to help me begin the pilot.  After we returned, Manny invited Tey to join the project, and, both are presenters here at the Forum this week, and, co-authors of the White paper. Manny, Tey and Kristina are planning the follow up trip to Bangladesh for later this month.  

The key distinction our approach has with other standards efforts is that we start from the premise that to develop appropriate governing standards for SSI, we need to start from the premise that the state needs to let individuals and private organizations drive the effort.  Our pilot project is based on this approach. One of our presenters, Scott Cooper, will be heading over to ISO in Geneva right after the conference, for follow up meetings to work with IBO on our standards approach, from the ground up. We definitely want to coordinate our efforts with IIW and IEEE.

To make new identities meaningful to refugees and other disenfranchised populations, IBO used our PeaceTones initiative to find musicians from these communities who would work with us to create an album, and, in the process, create intellectual property they would own. Last year, one of our supporters, a human rights lawyer and activist, David Levy, (https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-levy-4a080498) worked with PeaceTones to take our efforts to the next level. He traveled to several countries and refugee camps to compile an album with video called World United in Song. The album recently launched. https://peacetones.org/projects/world-united-song/   IBO then partnered with Ethan Baer,  the founder of  edm.com (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethan-baer-b20b0633) whose company has offered their services to PeaceTones help us manage the contracts and distribution for the 24 artists who are on the album.  So each of the World United in Song musicians has both been paid for their work and digitally signed a contract with PeaceTones.  We are completing a licensing 'synch' agreement this week with http://heavyhittersmusic.com/ to monetize the album.  The musicians will be able to access their earnings with their new digital identity.  That's how the Invisibles and WUIS link together.

The first video for the album is available here (with 10 more to be released this year): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHrAf-ArjIo

As well, the album is streaming on all platforms, here's the Spotify link if anyone is interested: 

https://open.spotify.com/album/5TZlMnvnY7JtbCo60WgQzs?si=EIrplBhvReOtJxrcu8uFvw