Digital ID, Tech, and Statelessness

Digital ID poses both risks and opportunities for people impacted by statelessness and discriminatory nationality laws. Find out about efforts to ensure these systems are inclusive and respect the rights of those most affected.

Digital identity systems are rapidly becoming the way through which people access rights and essential services, from healthcare and education to banking, employment, and political participation. These systems are often presented as improvements, making processes faster and more accessible and eliminating the need for printed documents. On the other hand, for an estimated 15 million stateless people in the world, and the tens of millions more at risk of statelessness, digitalization poses risks.

Access to digital ID frequently depends on already possessing foundational documents, such a birth certificate, national identity card, or residence permit, which stateless people are disproportionately likely to lack. Centralized databases and biometric systems bring about new forms of surveillance, heightening the risk of detention and deportation for vulnerable populations. With human oversight largely bypassed and with decisions made and implemented en masse, thousands with precarious access to nationality can be excluded with a click of a button, with no clear recourse. When people are on the move, digital systems can add layers of scrutiny that curtail access to life-saving services and asylum procedures.

These unique challenges mean that people impacted by statelessness and the initiatives they lead should be active participants in shaping digital ID policies and how they are rolled out. Impacted person-led organizations understand how digital systems affect their communities in practice, how discrimination can be reproduced in new administrative procedures, who risks being excluded, and what alternative approaches can help people overcome exclusion.

Impacted person-led responses

Across our community, organizations are engaging with digital identity from multiple directions, through advocating for rights-based design, research and evidence building, and developing their own tools to reach and empower communities impacted by statelessness and denial of equal nationality rights.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Nationality for All (NFA) has published the third edition of their flagship report, the Statelessness Encyclopedia Asia Pacific (SEAP), examining how digital ID systems are established across 48 countries in the region. Their research underscores how digitalization does not automatically mean inclusion and, without human rights and non-discrimination built into its design, digital ID can reproduce and worsen existing inequalities in the registration systems. NFA also advocates for universal birth registration, alternative documentation pathways including legal identity documents specifically designed for stateless persons, and maintaining non-digital access as essential safeguards for stateless people as ID systems are modernized and digitalized.

Nubian Rights Forum (NRF), a grassroots human rights organization in Kenya, has led high-profile legal challenges to improve the country’s digital identity systems. They observed how discrimination that was formally abolished in one administrative process has reappeared in the computerized systems that replaced it. Nubian, Somali, and other minority community members (who have historically faced scrutiny and discriminatory vetting) now navigate computerized systems that leave little room to explain complex documentation histories. At the same time, NRF’s mobile registration work brings documentation services and paralegal support directly to communities, reducing practical barriers.

Another grantee partner organization in Kenya, Haki Na Sheria (HSI), has directly facilitated the issuance of 8,600 birth certificates and 2,605 national identification cards to historically excluded communities in Northern Kenya. Now, HSI is leading legal advocacy against the unmonitored rollout of the Maisha Namba digital ID system. Their petition seeks to embed mandatory constitutional safeguards against data violations and prevent the automatic triggering of discriminatory vetting procedures. Through the Human Rights Desks, HSI also identifies documentation-related abuse and provides legal representation to those arbitrarily denied.

In the Dominican Republic, CEDESO has developed a mobile application designed to help communities navigate documentation windows, access information about registration opportunities, and report rights violations including arbitrary detention and deportation. Built with accessibility at its core, the app is to overcome barriers more frequently faced by affected communities, such as limited digital literacy. Similarly, in Lebanon, Oummal uses tech tools to provide stateless communities with information about accessing healthcare. Through their community-embedded work, Oummal improves digital civil registration workflows, making documentation processes more accessible for people who are undocumented or at risk of statelessness, including those who risk losing documents due to conflict and displacement.

Our partner organization, Global Movement Against Statelessness (GMAS), has been bringing the experiences of impacted activists into dialogue across regions, convening the webinar ‘The Black Box: Statelessness and the Hidden Harms of Digital ID’ to surface lived experience and build collective responses to the challenges digital systems pose for stateless communities.

Our approach

The Global Statelessness Fund believes that stateless people and the organizations they lead are best placed to understand, navigate, and shape the changes affecting their communities, including in the digital sphere.

As digital identity systems expand and tech tools become essential in accessing rights and services, it is crucial that the initiatives led by and closest to stateless communities are resourced to respond. Multi-year, unrestricted funding enables our grantee partners to monitor developments as they emerge, adapt their strategies, and invest in technology-based approaches to offer pathways for affected communities.

The Global Statelessness Fund is an initiative co-created by stateless people, civil society organizations, and donors. We believe that the most effective responses to statelessness are those led by people with lived experience. The Fund seeks to strengthen the individual and collective action of stateless people and their partners through participatory, flexible, and transformative grantmaking.