Rohingya Muslims, the world’s largest stateless minority, will have better access to services like hospitals, education and banking, thanks to a new blockchain-based digital identity initiative.
The Rohingya Project plans to issue its first 1,000 digital IDs to Rohingya in Malaysia, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia beginning in 2018, according to Reuters. There are more than 4 million Rohingya Muslims around the world who are stateless, since the nation of Myanmar stopped recognizing them in 1982.
In recent months, some 650,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh, forced out by the Buddhist majority in Myanmar. But the nation of Bangladesh believes the Rohingya should go back to Myanmar, leaving the stateless people without proper access to basic services.