# Rohingya Decentralized Identity and Community Building by Muhammad Noor | Devcon SEA

- Speakers: [Muhammad Noor](https://streameth.org/speakers/muhammad-noor)
- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2025-10-07
- Duration: 11:07
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-3GBkaOSBuT0
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GBkaOSBuT0

## Description

The Rohingya Project is a transformative digital platform addressing the critical needs of the Rohingya community, focusing on empowerment and cultural preservation. Key services include R-ID, a decentralized identity verification system ensuring privacy and access to opportunities, and R-Academy, which offers courses on Rohingya culture and personal development. The Heritage Archive provides access to cultural resources, while the Community Exchange fosters collaboration & economic development.

Speaker(s): Muhammad Noor
Skill level: Intermediate
Track: Real World Ethereum
Keywords: Decentralization, Digital Sovereignty, Ethereum for Good

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Devcon SEA was held in Bangkok, Thailand on Nov 12 - Nov 15, 2024.
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## Transcript

[Music] again hi everyone thank you very much for the stage uh how is everyone today it's about to go dark a little bit thank you very much for the stage my name is Muhammad n I'm a rohinga myself from neighboring country Burma Myanmar as a rohinga uh today I would like to talk uh two aspect of uh identity of course one part which uh uh being how a technology can help a marginalized community and how that can be as a model for the rest of the world so moving forward uh uh we started this project called the rohena project moving forward so before we go into the project I would like to differentiate between two aspect of a lot of people uh talk about number one is a refugee a a refugee a person that migrated from their own country for multiple reason religious persecution political persecution and many of those things and stateless is person which a person that is not recognized by the state or some sort of fall into the crack of any system that does not have any sort of identity so according to the un uh this is not exact but there's about 120 million refugees across the globe and that is also increasing and about 20 million stat less that um include in many parts of the world and uh unfortunately we happen to be one large portion of those stateless people moving forward what is the rohinga and who are these people rohinga are the indigenous ethnic minority of Myanmar formerly known as Burma mainly residing in arakan state which is a rakan state the rohinga people have endured over four Decades of statelessness displaced and genocide and Homeland and many of these victims which has been recognized by the International Community in many of the uh International jurisdiction call as genocide ICC and icj uh some of you might know and the estat list has left there are about 3 million people now people living in diaspora that uh consist of Bangladesh and which I will uh follow so these 3 million people over 3 million people have no documentation have no birth certificate have no passport and so that they so have no access to any any kind of things moving forward so this is a kind of a rough map where the Roha are located across the world so this is like about 300,000 Plus in Saudi Arabia in UAE in Pakistan in India and Bangladesh is one of the largest which is 1.3 it could be 1.4 and Thailand Malaysia Indonesia and many uh other countries uh regardless of Australia Japan and uh Europe and us and so on and so forth moving forward just to give you a glimpse how the refugee are living this is a aial short of Bangladesh refugee camp is extremely harsh condition there's no sanitation no food and there's many NGS trying to help and there's no infrastructure just to give you closer lims this is how it look like it's all makeshift camps every time there is burning fire and many uh of those uh issues to go go quickly so those are the harsh condition of the ranga people so because of the statelessness we are uh trying to identify a few things uh so because of the uh B so they don't have basic rights and basic access to any of this which is no ranga can go to any University education or even simple School uh social any kind of social function or financial is something really really big no rohinga can even receive money from something like a Western Union forget about opening a bank account and of course identity is a major issue uh quickly moving forward so we started this project called the rohena project uh the rohena project is a grassroot initiative uh dedicated to preserve and promote rohinga identity uh through a decentralized identity using blockchain enable access to learning and skill building and unlock some sort of opportunity so the way we we are uh uh going forward is of course one of our vision is because being rohinga has been margin marginalized in many different parts of the world so it is our vision how do we restore Roha identity uh and dignity as well the four component in the ranga project component number one is a decentralized identity so this can be an unlocking for rest of this and second is education and skill we have built number of it as well which I will show you and a community exchange where we we use multiple token technology to incentivize Community uh people and then we have a a a Heritage archive that actually uh preserve our identity and Heritage and and uh all sorts of things and moving forward so this is a quick glimpse of what we do in Heritage archive audio visuals and Community exchange P2P transaction Aid distribution is another one uh so uh in the decentralized identity we are using something called communitybased verification since we don't have any Central Institute and we are one of the largest centralized uh Central in victim of central uh centralized Institute moving forward this is what we are targeting in terms of uh sustainable development goal uh so my time is up so I'm just quickly going to show what our our road maps are we started in 2018 so we did multiple collaboration one of them is University of Washington we did a pilot in 2019 uh and then we have did educational pilot historical archive as well and this year we have launched the uh Art Academy so this is what basically we won and uh this is where we we have finished it this is what we're going to build now in the future uh some sort of infrastructure development and MPV and so on and looking for Community engagement and looking for partnership that's all for me thank you very much thank you Muhammad I took one extra half a we have time for question but if you guys don't mind I want to ask a question myself first uh can you share a little bit more about the communitybased verification system right since we do not have any Central uh Authority and neither we have any kind of a passport or anything that can they can rely on so it's based on for example if I say I from this particular place in raka state I'm a rohinga and those local villagers will verify me saying that yes I know his family I know him through the language through the uh and stuff like that so we have a very strong Community Based verification that we are placed uh to verify how many people verify you for you to become a part of the uh it could be from simple from two to three people uh that knows you can be verified thanks for sharing that any more question from the audience we have one okay please catch nice okay um how do you handle the challenge of uh having mobile devices or internet access for this or do you have a A failover system that doesn't require any kind of a mobile device or internet access right right so uh since our as I have shown you the map our diaspora is across different parts so those who live in Thailand and Malaysia they are fairly in a good infrastructure have some sort of a good access to the phone but those who are in Bang cam they might not have a good access to the phone and internet so we are trying to build a QR code offline so that they can use with minimum uh charges and we have a lot of uh offline facilities that we're providing so it can be assisted and we are trying to deal with the very marginalized and uh sorry to say illiterate community so we have to do a lot of uh uh uh you know a lot of spoon feeding and handling on the ground host that answers your question hey uh thank for your presentation I have a couple questions uh first question is I'm curious where you are getting the funding to uh do this project second question is your goal um to uh with this decentralized identity is it to get um you know countries like normal countries to recognize this identity right thank you very much so uh the way we are now funding ourself is through a community funding which is really like a boost strapping uh we did couple of crowdfunding we haven't uh got any dedicated or organization funding which we are looking into it uh that is one and the second one uh uh what was the second uh question just now you mentioned I think it's whether you want to be recognized by other Na by by the authorities so uh rohinga decentral identity meant to be a secondary Identity or a kind of community identity rather than a legal identity so in any state you have a legal identity like passport and ID then you have license ID to you know have a specific services this is meant to be a community identity to access some educational and financial services but that is a bigger goal in the future where we would Lobby once we have enough number to recognize and moving forward on that yeah so that's part of the plan yes got it one last question short one yeah you mentioned about communic Community Based verification but uh the number of persons three or four it two more actually I think so is there any mechanism for like if you want to abuse this mechanism you can like like say I this person even though I'm not this person but is there any mechanism for avoiding this yes yes they are so uh the way this happens is that when you put an application the first thing you do is you record yourself one minute ranga language video so say I'm from here blah blah blah and the community verifiers will look into it if they are not satisfied they will have an one to one online call to make sure you are talking you have the language so we have five major test cultural test language test this is only thing we can rely on since we don't have documentation so really you know I mean geographical knowledge of the place and so on and so forth so it is extremely hard for any non ranga to penetrate but it's extremely easy for any ringa to get registered thank you that's it for our question time please please reach out to Muhammad if you have any more questions about it it's a very interesting uh project and fascinating sharing thank you uh let's give Muhammad another round of applause thank you very much thank you Muhammad so the next the next person