Opinion and Recommendations by World Citizenship Council
The World Citizenships Council (WCC), urges all caribbean CIPs to upgrade to latest technologies by 2020 including collecting biometric data from all CBI applicants. The biometric data includes fingerprinting, retinal scans and also facial recognition features.
Biometrics helps to strengthen security systems and due diligence and helps preventing abuse of applicants. Applicants are known to change their identity, change appearance and biometric check prevents such abuses.
The WCC welcomes decision by St Kitts and Nevis leading the way to upgrade the CBI program in collecting biometric fingerprints from applicants.
Considering security as paramount importance, WCC urges all the CBI/CIP countries to implement biometrics and share the data across all CBI jurisdictions. Cross checking biometric data reveals multiple identities. We therefore propose no passports are to be issued without collecting biometrics from applicants.
WCC highly recommends setting up an CIP international committee to monitor and oversee data-sharing of refused applicants, biometrics and applicant data, across all CBI jurisdictions in Europe, Caribbean and the Pacific
CIP revenues could be used to fund and upgrade the security systems in the Caribbean countries. The latest generation of e-passports contain a chip that can hold biometric data which other countries can use it to check at borders.
Dominica and St Lucia are the two countries that still do not issue Biometric passports under CBI program. St Kitts, Antigua and Grenada issue biometric e-passports at par with other countries. The whole issue lies around, what’s the point in issuing biometric passports without collecting biometric features from CBI applicants?
About World Citizenship Council
World Citizenship Council (WCC) is a non-profit organization for research, development and promotion of the citizenship/ residency schemes worldwide. The Council will focus on key areas, such as, security, due diligence and new technologies such as blockchain and will help countries with these issues. Other issues such as migration, refugees, taxation and dual citizenship will be on the forefront. We are still a startup and expected to launch in late 2019 or in 2020. Stay tuned for events.
Membership is free
Please visit http://worldcitizenshipcouncil.org.
