Biometric Identity and Refugee Protection: The Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh

The chapter examines the role of biometric identity systems in shaping refugee protection and everyday governance in humanitarian contexts of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Situating biometric registration within critical debates on technology, surveillance, and state power, it interrogates how biometric identity produces a conditional and mediated form of legal existence for forcibly displaced populations. Drawing on theoretical insights from critical studies of biometrics and the body, the chapter argues that biometric identification operates not merely as a neutral tool of documentation but as a socio-political assemblage that reconfigures inclusion and exclusion. Through an analysis of biometric registration practices in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps, the chapter demonstrates how refugee bodies are transformed into data points that enable humanitarian assistance while simultaneously reinforcing control, secularization, and differentiation between citizens and non-citizens. Particular attention is paid to the gendered implications of biometric governance, highlighting how biometric systems intersect with existing hierarchies of gender, race, and statelessness. While biometric identity may facilitate access to aid, protection from trafficking, and targeted assistance, it also reproduces legal precarity and limits political agency by embedding refugees within the technocratic regimes of surveillance. The chapter concludes by questioning the assumption that biometric identity necessarily enhances protection and calls for a more reflexive, rights-centered approach to humanitarian technologies.