The Rohingya, whom experts say are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world, are a stateless Indo-Aryan people from Rakhine State, Myanmar. They have been subjected to abuse for a number of years, particularly after the enactment of the Burma Citizenship Law in 1982, which officially left the Rohingya stateless. There were an estimated one million Rohingya living in Myanmar before the 2016–17 crisis. On Oct. 22, the United Nations reported that an estimated 603,000 refugees from Rakhine – who are denied citizenship in Buddhist-majority Burma – had crossed the border into Bangladesh since August. This number increased to 624,000 by November, and over 625,000 by December.
The Rohingya Project said there are nearly 3.5 million stateless Rohingya worldwide, the vast majority of whom are undocumented and therefore denied access to basic services, such as financial transactions, healthcare, travel, etc. The blockchain pilot project is set to provide the Rohingya people with digital identity cards, which will help them access basic services such as banking, education, and healthcare. Individual Rohingya will have their ancestry authentically identified to link them directly to their original lands of dispersion.