[Music]
again hi everyone thank you very much
for the stage
uh how is everyone
today it's about to go dark a little bit
thank you very much for the stage my
name is Muhammad n I'm a rohinga myself
from neighboring country Burma Myanmar
as a
rohinga uh today I would like to talk uh
two aspect of uh identity of course one
part which uh uh being how a technology
can help a marginalized community and
how that can be as a model for the rest
of the world so moving forward uh uh we
started this project called the rohena
project moving forward so before we go
into the project I would like to
differentiate between two aspect of a
lot of people uh talk about number one
is a refugee a a refugee a person that
migrated from their own country for
multiple reason religious persecution
political persecution and many of those
things and stateless is person which a
person that is not recognized by the
state or some sort of fall into the
crack of any system that does not have
any sort of identity so according to the
un uh this is not exact but there's
about 120 million refugees across the
globe and that is also increasing and
about 20 million stat
less that um include in many parts of
the world and uh unfortunately we happen
to be one large portion of those
stateless
people moving forward what is the
rohinga and who are these people rohinga
are the indigenous ethnic minority of
Myanmar formerly known as Burma mainly
residing in arakan state which is a
rakan state the rohinga people have
endured over four Decades of
statelessness displaced and genocide and
Homeland and many of these victims which
has been recognized by the International
Community in many of the uh
International jurisdiction call as
genocide ICC and icj uh some of you
might know and the estat list has left
there are about 3 million people now
people living in diaspora
that uh consist of Bangladesh and which
I will uh follow so these 3 million
people over 3 million people have no
documentation have no birth certificate
have no passport and so that they so
have no access to any any kind of things
moving forward so this is a kind of a
rough map where the Roha are located
across the world so this is like about
300,000 Plus in Saudi Arabia in UAE in
Pakistan in India and Bangladesh is one
of the largest which is 1.3 it could be
1.4 and Thailand Malaysia Indonesia and
many uh other countries uh regardless of
Australia Japan and uh Europe and us and
so on and so
forth moving forward just to give you a
glimpse how the refugee are living this
is a aial short of Bangladesh refugee
camp is extremely harsh condition
there's no sanitation no food and
there's many NGS trying to help and
there's no infrastructure just to give
you closer lims this is how it look like
it's all makeshift camps every time
there is burning fire and many uh of
those uh
issues to go go quickly so those are the
harsh condition of the ranga people so
because of the statelessness we are uh
trying to identify a few things uh so
because of the uh B so they don't have
basic rights and basic access to any of
this which is no ranga can go to any
University education or even simple
School
uh social any kind of social function or
financial is something really really big
no rohinga can even receive money from
something like a Western Union forget
about opening a bank account and of
course identity is a major
issue uh quickly moving forward so we
started this project called the rohena
project uh the rohena project is a
grassroot initiative uh dedicated to
preserve and promote rohinga identity uh
through a decentralized identity using
blockchain
enable access to learning and skill
building and unlock some sort of
opportunity so the way we we are uh uh
going forward is of course one of our
vision is because being rohinga has been
margin marginalized in many different
parts of the world so it is our vision
how do we restore Roha identity uh and
dignity as
well the four component in the ranga
project component number one is a
decentralized identity so this can be an
unlocking for rest of this and second is
education and skill we have built number
of it as well which I will show you and
a community exchange where we we use
multiple token technology to incentivize
Community uh people and then we have a a
a Heritage archive that actually uh
preserve our identity and Heritage and
and uh all sorts of things and moving
forward so this is a quick glimpse of
what we do in Heritage archive audio
visuals and Community exchange P2P
transaction Aid distribution is another
one uh so uh in the decentralized
identity we are using something called
communitybased verification since we
don't have any Central Institute and we
are one of the largest centralized uh
Central in victim of central uh
centralized
Institute moving forward this is what we
are targeting in terms of uh sustainable
development goal uh so my time is up so
I'm just quickly going to show what our
our road maps are we started in 2018 so
we did multiple collaboration one of
them is University of Washington we did
a pilot in
2019 uh and then we have did educational
pilot historical archive as well and
this year we have launched the uh Art
Academy so this is what basically we won
and uh this is where we we have finished
it this is what we're going to build now
in the future uh some sort of
infrastructure development and MPV and
so on and looking for Community
engagement and looking for partnership
that's all for me thank you very much
thank you Muhammad I took one extra half
a we have time for question but if you
guys don't mind I want to ask a question
myself first uh can you share a little
bit more about the communitybased
verification system right since we do
not have any Central uh Authority and
neither we have any kind of a passport
or anything that can they can rely on so
it's based on for example if I say I
from this particular place in raka state
I'm a rohinga and those local villagers
will verify me saying that yes I know
his family I know him through the
language through the uh and stuff like
that so we have a very strong Community
Based verification that we are placed uh
to verify how many people verify you for
you to become a part of the uh it could
be from simple from two to three people
uh that knows you can be verified thanks
for sharing that any more question from
the audience we have one okay please
catch
nice okay um how do you handle the
challenge of uh having mobile devices or
internet access for this or do you have
a A failover system that doesn't require
any kind of a mobile device or internet
access right right so uh since our as I
have shown you the map our diaspora is
across different parts so those who live
in Thailand and Malaysia they are fairly
in a good infrastructure have some sort
of a good access to the phone but those
who are in Bang cam they might not have
a good access to the phone and internet
so we are trying to build a QR code
offline so that they can use with
minimum uh charges and we have a lot of
uh offline facilities that we're
providing so it can be assisted and we
are trying to deal with the very
marginalized and uh sorry to say
illiterate community so we have to do a
lot of uh uh uh you know a lot of spoon
feeding and handling on the
ground host that answers your question
hey uh thank for your presentation I
have a couple questions uh first
question is I'm curious where you are
getting the funding to uh do this
project second question is your goal um
to uh with this decentralized identity
is it to get um you know countries like
normal countries to recognize this
identity right thank you very much so uh
the way we are now funding ourself is
through a community funding which is
really like a boost strapping uh we did
couple of crowdfunding we haven't uh got
any dedicated or organization funding
which we are looking into it uh that is
one and the second one uh uh what was
the second uh question just now you
mentioned I think it's whether you want
to be recognized by other Na by by the
authorities so uh rohinga decentral
identity meant to be a secondary
Identity or a kind of community identity
rather than a legal identity so in any
state you have a legal identity like
passport and ID then you have license ID
to you know have a specific services
this is meant to be a community identity
to access some educational and financial
services but that is a bigger goal in
the future where we would Lobby once we
have enough number to recognize and
moving forward on that yeah so that's
part of the plan yes got it one last
question short one yeah you mentioned
about communic Community Based
verification but uh the number of
persons three or four it two more
actually I think so is there any
mechanism for like if you want to abuse
this mechanism you can like like say I
this person even though I'm not this
person but is there any mechanism for
avoiding this yes yes they are so uh the
way this happens is that when you put an
application the first thing you do is
you record yourself one minute ranga
language video so say I'm from here blah
blah blah and the community verifiers
will look into it if they are not
satisfied they will have an one to one
online call to make sure you are talking
you have the language so we have five
major test cultural test language test
this is only thing we can rely on since
we don't have documentation so really
you know I mean geographical knowledge
of the place and so on and so forth so
it is extremely hard for any non ranga
to penetrate but it's extremely easy for
any ringa to get
registered thank you that's it for our
question time please please reach out to
Muhammad if you have any more questions
about it it's a very interesting uh
project and fascinating sharing thank
you uh let's give Muhammad another round
of applause thank you very much thank
you Muhammad so the next the next person