How Blockchain Can Help Humanitarian Causes
The Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), also known as blockchain, is ushering in an era of a highly secure, digital, transparent, open, immutable and distributed ecosystem, which will transform the way everything around us operates.
The possibilities of blockchain go beyond economics and speed—it’s about accuracy and building trust. By leveraging its power of transparency and reliability, the current systems can overhaul themselves to have far-reaching social and economic implications. Here’s a look at how blockchain-based processes and projects are changing the rules of the game for a better tomorrow.
Article 6 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights stipulates, ‘Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.’ However, more than a billion people across the globe lack access to this fundamental right, depriving them of basic healthcare, education, voting, housing, schooling, childcare, housing benefits and other social facilities.
In June 2017, Accenture and Microsoft (MSFT) partnered to provide a blockchain solution to support the ID2020 program, a public-private partnership dedicated to solving the challenges of identity for such people, through technology. The Accenture prototype aligns to the principles of the Decentralized Identity Foundation, and uses the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance’s private, or ‘permissioned,’ blockchain protocol.
In November 2017, the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA), Fordham University, in collaboration with the UN hosted the ‘Humanitarian Blockchain Summit.’ During the summit, a pilot blockchain-based initiative to combat the grave issue of child trafficking was announced by the World Identity Network (WIN), the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and the United Nations Office of Information and Communications Technology (UN-OICT). By UN estimates almost 50% of the children (under 5 years) in the world do not possess a birth certificate while the estimates for children under 14 exceed 600 million worldwide.
These undocumented children and minors fall in the high-risk category as they are invisible for development or government agencies. Thus, identity not just lays the foundation stone to avail any economic, social or political opportunity, it ensures that every life is valued. In this light, it is imperative to include every individual onto a tamper-proof system and ensure their existence is acknowledged and they get their rightful due.
