The new geography of asylum: digital identity, artificial intelligence and blockchain

Abstract

For several years, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has insisted on the need to invest in new technologies to improve the procedures for the identification, reception and redistribution of asylum seekers around the world. United Nations experts have promoted new forms of digital inclusion aimed at both asylum seekers and displaced persons. They consider digital tools to be essential for achieving one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals: Target 16.9, which by 2030 intends to provide legal identity for all, including birth registration. Biometrics have been used on an experimental basis since the early 2000s to create digital identities in the humanitarian space for those vulnerable persons without traditional identity documents. It is a divisive subject. The aim of this article is to consider, from a geopolitical perspective, if following the acceleration of the digital revolution caused by the pandemic it is possible to invest in technological tools to improve the processes of identification, redistribution and reception of asylum seekers and displaced persons while at the same time respecting their privacy and freedoms. This hypothesis would signal the emergence of a geography of receiving asylum seekers on a global scale based not only on the governance of territory and borders, but also on platform governance.