Legal Identity Under Insurgencies and Unrecognised States

Legal identity comprises a documented relationship between a person, the law and the state. Some insurgencies seek to replace the state and start issuing legal identity documents (e.g. ID cards or birth certificates) to the people under their control.
We study this phenomenon and its wide-ranging implications by looking at three complementary cases:
(1) the Kachin Independence Organisation/Army in Myanmar (which recently started issuing ID documents);
(2) the Syrian Interim Government (which used to issue ID documents but now faces defeat);
(3) the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (which has become an established but widely unrecognized state).

We will explore what shape legal identity takes in these three contexts, what implications it has for the people affected, and how these people navigate major political shifts.