The Rohingya ID Project is a community-led initiative to ensure access to essential services for stateless refugees, in lieu of state or UNHCR-issued legal IDs. The project aims to leverage blockchain technology—in the form of a community-verified open ledger—to provide Rohingya refugees with a unique token that allows them to access to the larger Rohingya Project’s financial and social services, without the need for resorting to other types of (typically state-issued) identification.92 Realizing the Right to a Legal Identity Limited capacity of civil society organizations and state institutions, including a lack of knowledge of and experience with legal identity issues, human and financial resources, and physical geography, can complicate implementation and integration of services. These limitations underscore the need to work with district management systems and with the judicial system to augment access to legal identity documentation and realize legal identity rights in Indonesia. The Australia Indonesia Partnership for Justice (AIPJ) The AIPJ worked to increase access to legal identity documents for de facto stateless Indonesians, contributing to national policy change and to the implementation of these changes at the subnational level. The AIPJ collaborated with civil society organizations in conducting research and evidence-based advocacy, producing draft regulations, and in building relationships and facilitating coordination with state institutions responsible for legal status and documentation. The AIPJ also provided funding for legal identity work and to strengthen civil society capacity. ALTERNATIVES TO DETENTION AND NON-PENALIZATION OF PROTECTION SEEKERS FOR “UNLAWFUL” ENTRY AND PRESENCE Seeking asylum has been recognized as a universal human right, and states have a generally recognized duty not to penalize individuals for irregular entry or stay in a territory where they are seeking asylum.93 States often rely on detention as a response to irregular migration, and it becomes a routine practice rather than a measure of last resort based on an individualized determination as to whether or not foreign nationals have international protection needs. It is imperative that any restrictions placed on the liberty and security of non-nationals should be carefully delineated in the law and subject to judicial and/or administrative review. To prevent arbitrariness, detention needs to be “necessary in the individual case, reasonable in all circumstances and proportionate to a legitimate purpose.”94 This requires that less intrusive and coercive measures have been determined to be ineffective in a given case.95 Where detention is not based on individual assessments of its necessity—e.g. if it is aimed at overall deterrence of irregular migration—its use is generally unlawful under international law.96 25 UND OING PRECARIT Y: ELE VATING P OSITIVE PR ACTICES FOR REFU GEE PROTECTION IN SO U TH AND SO U THE AST ASIA

Select target paragraph3

Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents