What happens to civil registration during insurgencies or violent conflict? Since legal identity documents are usually issued by state-sanctioned authorities, how does the presence of non-state armed groups impact civil registration? These questions took center stage at a workshop on “Legal Identity under Insurgencies and Unrecognised States” convened by Marika Sosnowski and Bart Klem, and hosted by the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg. CitizenGap team members Atharv Dhiman and Imke Harbers contributed to these discussions by presenting their paper “Accessing Citizenship: Patterns of Civil Registration and Insurgent Conflict in India”. The paper shows that children born in communities affected by armed conflict are less likely to possess birth certificates, even when controlling for a range of other risk factors such as poverty and social marginalization. More information about the paper, and other contributions to the workshop, is available on the Armed Groups and International Law Blog.
