Child Sex Tourism: A Case Study in Surabaya, Indonesia

This article provides a case study of child sex tourism (CST) in Surabaya, Indonesia. CST cases are difficult to surface because the victims of CST are such vulnerable human beings. Victims of CST need a variety of forms of support for their recovery and reintegration. This article contends that social, economic, political, technological, and individual factors cause CST. It examines the negative impacts of CST, which are medical, social, psychological, and physical in nature. It also reveals that the techniques used for CST recruitment are fake promises, debt bondage, emotional abuse, counterfeit love, drug addiction, physical abuse, and gifts and favors. The elimination of CST calls for ending certain depraved cultural practices and beliefs, rehabilitation and reintegration of the victims, proactive anti-CST government policies and programs, enactment and effective enforcement of tough laws prohibiting CST, prosecution of the offenders, raising public awareness about the ills of CST, providing education for all children, the provision of national identification documents to all children, and strict border controls to prevent the trafficking of children for sex tourism.

3 Stages of a Pan-African Identity Framework for Establishing Self-Sovereign Identity With Blockchain

The African continent (specifically its overwhelming in(animate) resources) is often referred to as the sleeping giant by magazines, blogs, research presentations and articles, and NGOs [such as World Bank]. Reasons for this moniker/title include the continent’s plentiful natural resources, its large and quickly growing young population, and the young population’s quick adoption and acclimatization to technology. Most countries on the continent are known as developing countries due to lack of access to safe drinking water, reliable electricity and roads, sanitation and hygiene, and a high number of people with tropical/infectious diseases. However, due to the usefulness of cellular phones and technology, several countries and companies within them have focused on cell phone proliferation (91% in Kenya). Smart phone usage allows Kenyans access to the world’s information and potentially endless innovation. Given that a large number of Kenyans with smartphones use social media, coupled with the advent of Europe’s GDPR (general data protection regulation), African identity and its associated data became an area of great interest. As the world is quickly progressing into a digital economy, a solution must be created that allows us to regain and control our identities, doing our best to ensure losing such is infinitely close to computationally and probabilistically impossible/improbable. Developing a blockchain-based identity backbone using biometrics and historical family information while allowing government-based identification documents is the best way forward. Three stages have been identified as necessities to accomplish the development of this system before opening it further beyond the pan-African worldwide community. The three stages are defined by systems that allow for biometric/demographic registration (stage 1), interoperability and security hardening (stage 2), and biometric modality data analysis/organization/association (stage 3).

Book review: Tarangini Sriraman, In Pursuit of Proof: A History of Identification Documents in India

Tarangini Sriraman, In Pursuit of Proof: A History of Identification Documents in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018, 323 pp.

Privacy and Data Protection Practices of Digital Lending Apps in Kenya

The Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) has been studying the impact of digital identities on society. This has included policy research on the legal and technical aspects of the national digital ID system Huduma Namba under which the Government is integrating all its identification documents. This research shows that the national digital identity system also integrates with privately issued digital identities such as mobile phone numbers and social media accounts. We anticipate that as national digital ID uses increase, so will the linkage with private systems. This is already evident from e-government services, where payments for Government services, such as passport applications, drivers’ licences, national health insurance and hospital bills in public hospitals are made using mobile money platforms. We also appreciate that private digital ID is more developed and has more uses than national digital ID. For example, a 2019 survey, undertaken by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), estimates that access to financial products had risen from 26.7% in 2006 to 89% of the population in 2019. This is attributed partly to the availability of digital products such as “mobile banking, agency banking, digital finance and mobile apps”. These products make use of personal data, which broadly falls under digital identities. This study seeks to understand the privacy implications of digital ID by looking at digital lending apps.

"Papeles" comprados: procedimientos no ortodoxos implementados por guatemaltecos para adquirir documentos mexicanos de identificación personal

This article analyzes a series of extralegal procedures implemented by Guatemalans to acquire Mexican personal identification documents. The research focuses on the experiences of descendants of families who took refuge in Mexico during the 1980s and 1990s and returned to Guatemala between 1994 and 1996. These young people, born in Guatemala after their parents returned to their country of origin, employed the practice of buying Mexican birth certificates which were later used to enter Mexico legally. The fieldwork was carried out in two Guatemalan villages, as well as two Mexican ones, located in Cancun and Playa del Carmen. The main argument is that for them Mexican identification documents become a singular force that confers recognition and offers them the possibility to be incorporated into governmental logic which grants material benefits. Such forms of political imagination are related to the experiences of multiple documentation accumulated by older generations during their refuge period and are now encouraged by the Mexican State’s new border security strategy.

Financial Inclusion in Zimbabwe: Determinants, Challenges, and Opportunities

Financial inclusion is a highly topical issue for policymakers since inclusive finance is viewed as a channel of social and economic development. Therefore, this paper seeks to ascertain and examine the determinants, challenges, and opportunities for financial inclusion in Zimbabwe. The research is done by examining existing literature and estimating Logit and Probit models. This paper finds that, the major determinants of financial inclusion in Zimbabwe are; gender, age, education, income levels, employment status, the cost of financial services, account opening requirements, and level of trust in the financial system. Challenges to financial inclusion in Zimbabwe include; financial illiteracy, lack of formal identification documents, lack of trust in the financial system, fragile economy, rural poor and gender inequality, and high transaction costs of financial services. However, mobile money services such as Eco-cash, Tel-cash, and One-money have proved an opportunity for inclusive finance in Zimbabwe. Furthermore, the establishment of the women’s Bank of Zimbabwe is one of the strategies to enhance inclusive finance for women in Zimbabwe. The simplified KYC requirements for low-income groups and the financial inclusion strategy commissioned by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe are hoped to promote financial inclusion. This paper recommended that to make finance inclusive, the government should develop policies that target marginalized groups such as the elderly, rural population, low-income earners, females, and the unemployed. The government should also develop a strong consumer protection regulatory framework, promote financial literacy, reduce the transaction cost of financial services and encourage the use of accounts with simplified KYC requirements to ease documentation needs.

FINANCIAL MONITORING OF ECONOMIC AGENTS CLIENTS BASED ON THE VERIFICATION AND IDENTIFICATION INCOMING AND OUTGOING DOCUMENTS

For the successful conduct of certain financial transactions, economic agents determine the requirements for incoming and outgoing documents and develop appropriate templates for documents and messages. Identifying and verifying persons are effective tools that are given a leading role and help prevent the circulation of criminal funds through the financial and economic system, reveal the sources of illicit income, and identify the beneficiaries of such illegal funds. The article develops a block diagram of incoming and outgoing documents related to identifying and verifying persons subject to financial monitoring by economic agents and provides a detailed description of each stage of verification, requirements for documents, and content. Verification of incoming documents consists of three stages. At the 1st stage, identification documents are checked; at the 2nd stage – constituent documents (charter, founding agreement, model charter, decision on creation, changes to the constituent document, corporate agreement, description of documents, ownership structure, employment agreement (contract), regulations on governing bodies, decisions on election of officials, appointment order, card with sample signatures), at the 3rd stage financial documents (balance sheet, report on financial results, transcripts of balance sheet items, declarations, income statement, certificate on the absence of arrears of payments to the budget, certificate of cash flow from the servicing bank, account statement, certificate of indebtedness, patents, licenses, permits, certificates, certificates, credit agreements, guarantee agreements, letters of credit, loans, collateral, mortgages, guarantees, agreements with suppliers and buyers, lease agreements). The block diagram of the source documents for financial monitoring consists of four tuples, the key determinants of which are notifications to the Specially Authorized Body, notifications to the Security Service of Ukraine, information to the National Bank of Ukraine, letters to the client (servicing, from conducting financial transactions, to freezing the client's assets or to freezing assets on a financial transaction frozen by an economic agent).

Methods of Smuggling Narcotic Drugs, Psychotropic Substances, their Analogues and Precursors or Counterfeit Medicines and their Criminal Legal Characteristics

The concept of ways to commit drug smuggling, psychotropic substances, their analogues and precursors or counterfeit medicines that are present in scientific circles is analyzed. The main methods of drug smuggling and their detailed characteristics among the general classification are established and subspecies of ways to commit drug smuggling, which are relevant today, have been established and analyzed. At the same time, each subspecies is described and a clear example is given, which demonstrates the public danger of a particular way of committing drug smuggling. It was established that every year drug traffickers invent even more audacious ways to commit drug smuggling, while involving customs officers and law enforcement agencies in their illegal activities. Also, taking into account the unstable situation in the occupied territories of Ukraine and the realities of today, other illegal ways of smuggling counterfeit medicines have been established, which is quite a dangerous phenomenon. It is determined that the most appropriate and convenient way for the smuggling movement of counterfeit medicines is to forged customs identification documents and the use of fictitious business entities, which is an acute problem and requires new ways to solve this problem, as well as improvement of the legislation itself and the legal system as a whole. The methods of qualification of the above-mentioned offences under criminal law are analyzed and shortcomings regarding such qualifications are identified. A clear example and reasonably the need to make appropriate changes to the current norm, which provides for the responsibility for the smuggling of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances, their analogues and precursors or counterfeit medicines, followed by the prospect of their use.

The Suppressive Impacts of Voter Identification Requirements

Political observers argue that the United States is in a contemporary era of voter suppression. We study one mechanism that may limit voter participation, the requirement to show identification documents at the polls—voter ID policy. Voting rights advocates have raised concerns about disparate impacts of voter restrictions on racial minorities. However, past studies have reported conflicting results. Analyzing nationally representative data from the Current Population Survey across nine election years, we show that voter ID policies, and especially “strict photo ID policies,” have a suppressive effect on participation. Voter ID requirements can reduce the probability of self-reported voting by as much as four percentage points, enough to swing a national election. While we found suppressive effects of ID policies for all racial groups, we show that Latino citizens face disproportionately negative suppressive effects of strict ID policies.