Tracking Refugees Puts A Vulnerable Population At Risk
In Jordan, gathering the biometric data of Syrian refugees is part of the plan to keep them safe. But between potential security breaches and questions of privacy, the practice could be more hurt than help.
Via giphy.com
Volker Schimmel works in Amman, Jordan, with the UNHCR — the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees — on an initiative that allows asylum-seekers, many of whom have never owned a debit card, to access humanitarian aid money via ATMs that identify individuals by scanning their eyes. When this biometric cash assistance program started, 500 people signed up. Today, there are more than 32,000 displaced people participating. "When we started this, the number of refugees [in Jordan] was 16,000," Schimmel told BuzzFeed News. "Now it's 633,000."
We are in the midst of a global refugee crisis. There are currently 60 million displaced people worldwide. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have poured into Europe, fleeing state-sponsored violence in places like Syria. The recent terrorist attacks in Paris, which left 130 people dead, created something of an international panic around the screening processes refugees fleeing the Middle East undergo.
One such method is biometric data gathering, or the collection of facial images, fingerprints, and iris scans. The collection of this data by governments and international organizations serves many purposes — identifying residents, screening for criminal backgrounds, combatting fraudulent attempts to collect extra aid. But this is highly personal data, which in many cases refugees have no choice but to turn over if they want access to aid and supplies. The practice of collecting and storing it puts already persecuted and endangered people at risk of being tracked down by government actors in the states they are actively fleeing, or being targeted by others as potential terrorists.
Many states and organizations collect this data for different reasons; some employers even do it for reasons of security. Human rights activists have spoken out against Eurodac, the E.U.'s fingerprint database, which they see as invasion of individual privacy. In the U.S., terror attacks have led some to call for increased surveillance of refugees; the Department of Homeland Security published updated information about the interview and screening process refugees undergo in November.
Security isn't the only reason to collect biometric data. In India, 950 million citizens have participated in the government's biometric registration program; as a result, some 200 million people, mostly migrants from rural villages to cities, who had never had identification before were able to open bank accounts for the first time. This gives the government the ability to track citizens with greater accuracy than ever before. Anit Mukherjee, an International Development Research Centre fellow with the Center for Global Development, worked as an early adviser to the project. He said the information collected by the government is never deleted. "Your biometrics live in the database for perpetuity," he told BuzzFeed News. "It doesn't matter whether you're dead or alive."