12h 15min, oct 13, 2019 y - AH TWITTER Mariana Dahan

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I love working w the kinds of forces who take all the odds stacked angst them, flip them over & use them as a stepping stool 2 bring themselves + others up 2 higher ground. Honored 2 work w @marianadahan n her noble fight @WiNdotSystems - check out @ Forbes.

FROM FORBES:

Why Dr. Mariana Dahan And Amber Heard Want To Bring Identity To The World's Most Vulnerable

by Melissa Jun Rowley

Like more than 600 million children today, Mariana Dahan was born without a birth certificate— legal proof of her existence. There are multiple factors that may have led to this, such as the remoteness of her village, Grimancauti, which is in the country Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, or the time and costs associated with traveling to an issuing notarial office. But the main obstacle that kept her from getting identification was the fact that she was a girl and her father wanted a boy.

“For him, recognizing my birth as legitimate also entailed recognizing what he later explained as a ‘failure,’ explains Mariana. “My poor mother would get beaten up by my father each time he would get drunk. Even when she was pregnant with me, he would hit her in the belly because he really wanted a boy. When she finally summoned all her courage and ran to the police seeking protection, she got punished for speaking up against my father. Not only didn't the other male policemen believe her or protect her, her own family members turned against her and accused her of defamation.”

This part of Mariana's history and bearing witness to a number of voiceless women around the world like her mother inspired her to create the World Identity Network (WIN), which provides insights for global advocacy on identity. The initaitive’s aim is to ensure that everyone can prove who they are. Currently, more than one billion people are living without a recognized proof of ID. On a global scale, women and children make up more than half of this part of the population. Here's why this matters. Lack of identification perpetuates massive economic and social disparities. Without legal identity people are not able enroll for public services, to vote, to start a bank accounts, to register property, or to ultimately play a productive role in society.

While Mariana was growing up in Moldova on the border of the Ukraine without a legal identity, actress Amber Heard was being raised on the border of Texas. An advocate for women’s and children’s rights, she forged a partnership with WIN to help the organization fight for equality and identity for all.

“While I had the accidental luck of being born on this proverbial line in the sand, and have therefore enjoyed incredible luxury and privilege, it’s with this awareness and privilege that I am dedicated to shining a light on an otherwise invisible part of our culture and our global community,” shares Amber.

Why Identity Is A Fundamental Human Right

While working at the World Bank before she founded WIN, Mariana and her colleagues conducted research on how lack of identity disproportionately affects women and children in developing countries, as they face higher barriers to obtaining IDs. These include restrictions on traveling outside of their community, distance, cost, time constraints, illiteracy, lack of access to information and support, and possibly opposition from family members.

“For women, especially among socially excluded groups, social and cultural norms often make these constraints especially steep,” shares Mariana. “They would have to stand up to male supremacy to succeed. But it's not only in far-away countries where this is happening. It's also here, in the U.S. and other industrialized countries where this is taking place.”

Some of these countries are in the Middle East, where Amber has visited refugee camps, seeing firsthand how not having any identity affects people. While their current situation is bleak, Amber saw that many people living in these camps still have hope.

“The conditions and some of the injustice and unfairness and the plight of so many people, how unfair and brutal it was, that didn’t really surprise me," shares Amber. "What I left with was surprising. It was their resilience and fortitude. If we can appreciate what we as humans have capacity for then I think that optimism would go very far. It is so important to see the human subjects when we’re talking about global issues of injustice or politics because sometimes these debates can be mired and muddled in abstract policy debate and social religious disagreements, and we lose the human element of it. If we focus in on who is actually bearing the brunt of this injustice you really can get down to the essence of what it is.”

Blockchain & Identity

According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, 70% of refugees lack basic identification. When people are forced into displacement, they often leave behind important documentation, such as birth certificates, marriage licences, passports and ID cards. This is where blockchain technology can be useful. In the Zaataari Refugee Camp in Jordan, the first refugee camp that Amber visited and the first I’ve been to myself, the refugees are able to purchase food at a camp grocery store without the middle man—banks—being involved.

Mariana and the team at WIN are using blockchain on top of existing systems to ensure that no child is taken out of the country using fake ID documents that are produced by human traffickers. The blockchain's ability to permanently record a transaction, such as an attempted unauthorized exit at a border, can be used to prevent someone from bribing their way out of the country.

WIN is also working with children from orphanages because Mariana says, "Many children in the orphanage systems are being lost forever. We can't even find their identity papers. They vanish; going from one institution to another. They become extremely vulnerable to smugglers and human traffickers, who are snatching children for modern slavery or human organs trade."

Additionally, WIN is collaborating with local authorities to help children find their way back to their families, and in the process helping them get ID papers. The organization is also using funds to support those families through buying them homes.

The issues of refugees without identity, human trafficking, and lost orphans are bigger than the stigmas attached to their current stories.

“We’re talking about a human issue, a global issue, and I think it’s one that’s going to be increasingly important,” says Amber. “We need to stop looking at this as a political issue, and burying our heads in the sand, and claiming that if we just build a barricade or a big enough wall it’s going to go away.”

Mariana hopes that women activists like Amber will bring more attention to marginalized people everywhere—people who are still in the dark silently suffering in the shadows.

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