The U.N. is wrong to support national ID cards that could backfire on the persecuted minority.Papers matter for refugees. They get you across borders, they prove your claims if there’s ever a chance to return home, and they record the lost and the murdered. Families preserve the deeds for the homes they once owned, passing them down through generations in foreign lands. But documents are a double-edged sword. Documents recording births, attesting identity, and confirming residency have long been a key battleground for the Myanmar state in its protracted genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority in the western state of Rakhine. Throughout the decades since independence, subsequent military governments forced upon the Rohingya documents that attested residency—without confirming citizenship. These progressively eroded more and more of their rights in the country of their birth—most notably, the infamous white cards, which effectively disenfranchised the Rohingya while providing the Myanmar authorities useful population statistics that could be used in their so-called clearing operations over the past two years. Source: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/01/myanmar-wants-to-track-rohingya-not-help-them/