It is December 10 at the Zaatari refugee camp in northern Jordan, near the Syrian border. Khalid (44) was selling harissa in a small bakery with just one window open on the so-called Champs-ElysIJes, a road connecting the north and the south here. Harissa is a Syrian dessert made by kneading coconut powder into semolina flour--milled from durum wheat (a hard wheat). The baked bread is enjoyed after it receives a pour of sugar syrup. Khalid pressed a plastic spatula and cut the harissa into several pieces. My tongue tingled at the sweet taste.

"I made and sold harissa in my hometown." His hometown, Dara'a is a region where the Syrian civil war, which has been ongoing for nine years, was triggered. During the "Arab Spring" in 2011, there were many demonstrations against the dictatorship of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The anti-government protests were particularly fierce in Dara'a. They were triggered when a thirteen-year-old boy who painted graffiti criticizing the dictator died after being tortured by the government troops. The military fired at the citizens. The bloody suppression of the demonstrators led to a civil war, which has killed over hundreds of thousands of people so far.

When the civil war broke out, Khalid crossed the border with his family. Zaatari is a camp created when such refugees gathered. When Zaatari could not shelter all the refugees pouring in, the Jordanian government built the Azraq camp, located at an hour's drive from Zaatari. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), there are 73,000 and 37,000 refugees registered at Zaatari and Azraq, respectively. There are 650,000 refugees outside the camps, spread throughout Jordan including Amman.

There were puddles here and there on the Champs-ElysIJes, due to the rain from the previous day. Although the street was named after a street lined with luxury stores in Paris, France, here, it was a market street where the refugees traded in fruits and vegetables, toys, electronics, clothes and cigarettes. Occasionally, donkeys pulling carts, old cars and bicycles passed by. It seemed more like a peaceful rural marketplace than a refugee camp.

Khalid said, "We don't have a lot of customers. So we don't make a lot of money." It was difficult to make a living selling only harissa. Khalid was able to retain some of his life in Syria here at the refugee camp thanks to various support projects from international organizations like the United Nations and aid groups.

The UN World Food Program (WFP) provides 23 dinars (approximately 36,000 won) a month for every refugee in the camp. They don't transfer the money to the bank account of the refugee or hand it to him directly in cash. Instead, they put the money in a blockchain account. Transactions with the blockchain account take place based on the Jordanian dinar, not virtual currency like bitcoin or ethereum. Why did the World Food Program introduce blockchain to the refugee camp? How has the blockchain changed the lives of the refugees?

■ Payment Takes Place in Seconds with Iris Recognition

We followed the "road ring," an outer ring road surrounding the camp and reached Tazweed Center in the northwestern area of the camp. The World Food Program and Jordanian flags hung together in front of a building built with containers. Tazweed is a private supermarket in the camp where the refugees can use the funds from the WFP. There are two such stores in Zaatari and one in Azraq. At the store entrance, the fifteen countries that support the WFP's refugee program are introduced in the order of their donations. The national flag (Taegeukgi) of South Korea, which donated over US$2.3 million (approximately 2.6 billion won) for three years (2014, 2017, 2018), stands alongside the national flags of Japan, Italy, and Kuwait.

Tazweed only sells food. Most of their products are produced in Jordan. One corner is full of fresh vegetables and fruit, such as pumpkins, onions, apples, coconuts and bananas. Jasem (24), a Syrian refugee who has worked here since two years ago, was busy sorting out the potatoes. "This one's too small to sell, and this one's too big." Jasem said, "I was very scared when I crossed the border. Five years have passed now and I even got my first job here." He earns 200 dinars a month by working from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. This is equivalent to the minimum wage in Jordan. It is far too little to support a family of twelve. Jasem also receives 23 dinars a month from the World Food Program. He buys the food he needs at his workplace, the Tazweed Center.

In front of the cash register, there is a poster that says, "You cannot buy cigarettes, coke, alcohol, chocolate, and ice cream with the WFP fund." "After all, it's the World 'Food' Program. They can't support refugees so that they can buy harmful food with no nutrients." These were the words of Bardaghawi, a staff of the WFP Jordan office, known among the refugees as the "food guy."

A 71-year-old man who introduced himself as the father of Muhammad stood in front of the cash register after picking out some yoghurt, eggs and sugar. After the cashier scanned the bar codes on the products, he placed a camera in front of the old man's eye. It was a camera used for iris recognition. Every person has a different iris pattern, so it is used like fingerprints to identify people. On the cashier's monitor, a payment window popped up with the words "Eye Pay." The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which oversees the camp, collects the refugee information in a cloud server called Eye Cloud. Eye Pay is a kind of "easy online payment, which connects to Eye Cloud after the iris recognition, proves that the person making the purchase is a refugee, and withdraws the price of the products from the refugee's account. The UNHCR and the WFP introduced the technology in 2016. The words, "UNHCR accessing" flashed on the payment window, followed by "authentication," "checking account balance," and "payment approved." From iris recognition to the printing of the receipt, it only took 7-8 seconds. "It's very convenient. Old people like me can buy anything just by showing our eyes."

Originally, Eye Pay was linked to bank accounts. The WFP opened virtual accounts for the refugees at a bank. Once every month, the program transferred funds to the accounts. Before Eye Pay was introduced, the refugees carried debit cards connected to their bank accounts and used them to make their purchases. Providing money through the bank was more effective than the traditional method of providing goods or paper vouchers. The goods were distributed efficiently to those who needed them and the refugees began to manage their household finances as they had in Syria.

But there were some problems with the bank account system. Financial institutions took 1.5% of the transaction as fees. Information concerning the transaction of the refugees getting out of the camp was also a problem. Was there a way to directly trade with the supermarket without going through the bank? What if the supermarkets recorded the purchases of the refugees in their own books and then charged the WFP all at once? The problem was that the supermarkets could manipulate their books and request more money than the amount actually spent by the refugees and the WFP would have no way of knowing it. To solve this problem, they needed a credible third party that could record and verify the books instead of the banks. That was a problem, at least until the blockchain appeared.

■ Technology Enabling a Normal Life

The World Food Program replaced bank accounts with blockchain accounts and implemented the Building Block project. A pilot project was conducted in the Azraq camp in May 2017 and later expanded to the Zaatari camp last year. The blockchain is an electronic book shared by multiple users. Each time a refugee purchased groceries at the supermarket, the purchase was recorded in the blockchain books of the refugee and the supermarket. Blockchain distributes this book to all the people in the system. In other words, the WFP, which oversees the project, as well as the Tazweed Center possesses the original copy of the book, which contains the transactions of the refugees.

When a public blockchain book, open to everyone, is created, a process to verify the information is carried out. The blockchain compensates those who verify the books with virtual currency, such as bitcoin and ethereum. However, WFP's Building Block is a private blockchain where only a limited number of people--the people making the transaction--take part, so it does not require a separate verification process. Naturally, they do not use virtual currencies, compensation for verification.

Now that they had a book that everyone could trust, the role of the bank shrank. Every week, the World Food Program looks at the blockchain book it owns and transfers the money for the products purchased by the refugees to the Tazweed bank account. In this way, the WFP provided the refugees with US$39.4 million from May 2017 until the end of last year. If the program had provided the money through bank accounts as in the past, it would have had to pay US$591,000 more for the 1.5% bank fees. Not all transactions at Tazweed are carried out through the blockchain. Bardaghawi said, "Some refugees who can't use iris recognition, such as the blind, continue to use debit cards connected to bank accounts. There are slightly over a dozen people who use debit cards."

"We answer your calls from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m." Hotline posters are posted throughout the Tazweed Center. The hotline receives all kinds of inquiries about the service at stores and quality of the products. Bardaghawi said, "We receive questions about when the funding comes into the accounts most often." The funds are deposited on different dates depending on the size of the family. "If the funds were all transferred on the same date and time, the people would swarm to the supermarket that day. We have to prevent the store from running out of products."

One woman with two children stood in front of the cashier, but was unable to purchase the goods. There was no money in her blockchain account. The girl standing next to her began to pick up the products on the counter with a sullen face. The younger boy began to whine, "Why are you taking them back?" "I came with my niece and nephew thinking that the funds were in. But they say the money will come in tomorrow." I wanted to pull out some dinars from my wallet and hand it to them, but the WFP staff stopped me saying, "You had better not. Many refugees are watching our actions right now. We have to be careful." It was an effort to respect the pride of the refugees and also an expression of concern for helping just certain people.

The Jordanian government cut bread subsidies due to the recent economic crisis. Refugees outside the camps suffered a direct blow. This was why the World Food Program increased their funding of poor refugees outside the camps by 3-5 dinars a month. Up till now, the WFP has provided these funds through bank accounts, but the program has decided to switch this to a blockchain account in the future. The UN Development Fund for Women is also working on a project to fund working female refugees using WFP's blockchain.

When asked how a huge international organization could be a leader in using new technology like the blockchain, Bardaghawi answered, "Refugees have the right to live a normal everyday life. The services introduced by the WFP, such as bank accounts, the hotline, Eye Pay, and the blockchain, are an extension of such an ordinary life. For the refugees, restoring their daily lives is guarding their dignity. This is our job."