Showing posts with label Registration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Registration. Show all posts

Friday, May 17, 2019

More than a quarter million Rohingya refugees have legal ID after biometric registration

More than 270,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have been biometrically registered and received identity cards, the first time many of them have had legal identification, through a UNHCR and government of Bangladesh program.

UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic said in a briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva that the organizations have used the Biometric Identity Management System (BIMS) to register 270,348 out of more than 900,000 refugees in crowded settlements in the Cox’s Bazar district. After registering their fingerprints and iris scans, refugees receive a photo-ID card with biographic information, indicating Myanmar as their country of origin. More than 450 staff at six locations are registering over 4,000 refugees a day, in hopes of completing the registration process this year.

Registration gives many Rohingya refugees identification for the first time

UNHCR
By Alex St-Denis in Cox’s Bazar,
Bangladesh | 17 May 2019 

More than 270,000 stateless refugees from Myanmar provided with identity cards in an ongoing registration drive.

A family of Rohingya refugees hold up their identity cards after completing a UNHCR-run registration process at Kutupalong refugee settlement, Bangladesh.
© UNHCR/Will Swanson

Nasima Aktar is among hundreds of thousands of stateless Rohingya – many of whom have spent a lifetime without official documentation – for whom getting an official identity card is a significant step.