Ii. Current situation of identity documentation Despite recent efforts to modernize its civil registry, regularize migrants, and naturalize their descendants, the Dominican Republic still faces significant challenges in guaranteeing the human right to an identity and a nationality for the descendants of Haitian migrants. Before presenting the impacts of COVID-19, it is fitting to remember what these processes are and what point we had reached when the novel coronavirus entered the country in March 2020. “Modernization” of the Civil Registry In the 1990s, the civil registration and identification system was in a state of “virtual abandonment,” as can be seen in the photos published by the Central Electoral Board (JCE, in Spanish) in its report “Tech- nological Advances in Civil Registry and Identification” (JCE 2012). The Civil Registry Offices functioned in a seemingly state-like manner, although “in reality they responded to personal initiatives and used the Civil Registry Offices ... as a kind of trust for private services” (JCE 2012:5). This situation led to the manifest deterioration of books and records of civil status and allowed for “the mafias to traffic with impunity with the documents of the population” (JCE 2012:5). It was not until 2007 that the JCE assumed control of all Civil Registry Offices, prioritizing the modernization and securitization of the identity management system. As of 2005, the digitization of records that were in a state of deterioration had begun. Later, in alliance with international organizations, such as UNICEF and the OAS, it began to open more civil registration centers Research Brief: COVID-19 Impacts on Haitian Migrants and their Descendants on the Southern Border of the D.R. 15