This campaign is inspired by the personal experiences of documentary directors Lauren Anders Brown and Ali Alibrahim, both who live outside their countries of origin and faced their different struggles with documentation.

"When my mother was killed during the Syrian conflict, we had no way of proving she died because she did not have any documentation. We lost the documents because the Syrian regime bombed our house. It made it so much more painful losing her, her death could not be held accountable to the Syrian Regime." - Ali Alibrahim

Everyone deserves to prove who they are in order to live a fulfilled life, regardless of the bandwidth of the government of their country of origin to provide them with the documentation they need to do so. This is a fundamental human right that needs to be guaranteed to all. The current system is not working with people having no other option than turning to forgers as a means to survive.

The Syrian Regime has been engaged in conflict with its own people for ten years, and during that time over half a million of people have died, twice as many have been displaced, and hundreds of thousands born and many of them without documents proving their identity. The documentary FORGED shows how the Syrian people want to move on from the conflict but are unable to do so because the regime has made it so difficult to obtain any identity documents without fear of persecution or extortion.

The situation of the Syrian people is not unique, all over the world many governments use the control of documentation as way to control people - if you are undocumented you find many of the universal human rights do not exist for you because you cannot prove you exist. 

Forced migration is on the rise due to large issues such as conflict, the climate crisis and it is happening right now for those in Ukraine who are fleeing their homes from the attacks by Russia. 

With a world more connected as ever, even smaller and less dramatic personal circumstances such as migrating across a border for a life partner are made challenging or impossible with the current infrastructure for validating documentation globally.

By ignoring this issue, we allow for some to exploit this inequity and use it to commit crimes against humanity such as human trafficking and terrorism to name a few. The technology exists to prevent these situations from happening if we harness it.

By exploring the creation of a non-governmental identification system we can ensure this fundamental human right is restored to everyone around the world who has been denied the ability to prove who they are.

So what has been happening in Syria never happens again.