From zero to digital hero – challenges and recent efforts to ensure legal identity for all

Approximately 1.1 billion people globally are without a legal identity ¹.  The repercussions, both for states and for individuals are countless.  And a solution is needed if we are to truly promote inclusivity and individuals’ access to their basic rights.

In this blog I review the recent conversations on legal identity for all and the direction of travel when it comes to solutions.  Is digital identity the answer to universal individual legal identity?  Or do we need to be pragmatic about what is realistic for many of those 1.1 billion excluded?

 

The problem

The problem is global, but 81% of those without a legal identity live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.  68% live in lower-middle income economies and a further 28% live in low-income economies.  Africa is estimated to have over 550 million people without legal identity ².

The reason so many people do not have a legal identity is that they face barriers from birth onwards in registering key life events.  Those barriers can be financial: because the person cannot afford to pay for registering or documenting themselves or their child, or because to travel to the nearest official registration centre is too costly.  Or they can be procedural: successful documentation requires too many forms to be completed, or too many other supporting documents to be provided in order to register.  Sometimes, it’s a question of awareness: people do not appreciate the benefit of registering or documenting themselves or their children, or they do not even know that they have the right to do so.  And sometimes the state denies that person the right to register or document themselves and their family, because of their ethnicity or even because of their gender ³.

And, as with most things, there is a gender gap too, especially in low-income countries.  Over 45% of women lack a functional ID, compared to 30% of men.  Examples given by the World Bank of countries where the gender imbalance is high are Afghanistan, Benin and Pakistan.  It may not be the only reason, but in those three countries women face different rules and barriers in applying for an ID compared to men ⁴.

 

Why is legal identity important?

A legal identity provides a person with a formal identity and allows for that person to be recognised.  Another way to look at it, is that if a person does not have a legal identity, they do not officially exist.

It is the day-to-day impact on the individual that is most striking.  Legal identity is the foundation to claiming citizenship.  It is what allows children to access education, people to access health and social benefits, allows them to be in employment, to have a bank account, land and business registration and permission to travel and work abroad ⁵.

Legal identity, although such a personal thing, is also important for governments.  It is a way to strengthen a state’s institutional framework to provide the right services to those living within its borders ⁶.  And, arguably, the more widespread individual legal identity is, the better the state does, at least when it comes to upholding basic human rights and promoting a development agenda ⁷.

 

Legal identity for all as a global goal

Legal identity for all is so important that it is one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  States have signed up to goal 16, the goal of promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, providing access to justice for all and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.  One of the ways to achieve SDG 16 is, by 2030, to provide legal identity for all, including free birth registrations.  For more information on this sub-goal and whether birth registration will respond the challenge of providing legal identity for all by 2030, see my earlier blog on the topic.

The SDGs were adopted in 2015 and in 2019, four years on, the UN is set to review the progress of this goal by asking each state to focus on SDG 16 in its Voluntary National Review.  The UN recognises that in 2019, many regions have reached universal or near universal birth registration.  However, globally, the average is around 73%.  But the global average does not tell the whole story since, only 46% of all children in sub-Saharan Africa have their births registered.  States still have some way to go to reach that elusive 100% target in the next ten years.

 

Who is on board?

Regionally, that same aim is not so widely adopted.  When it comes to Africa, for example, we can contrast international donors’ repeated calls for documenting everyone on the continent with the weight given to the same issue in regional and continental goals.  International donors repeatedly make the link between regional and states’ human development commitments and legal identity ⁸.

But if we look at the AU’s own agenda and aspirations, Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want, that same focus is lacking.  Legal identity, birth registration and documentation are not mentioned as a way to promote inclusion, human development or access to basic rights ⁹.  In fact, they are not really mentioned at all.  That is not to say that no individual states want this ¹⁰.  But it is telling that, as yet, the idea that legal identity is essential to individual well-being has not been convincingly adopted as a regional goal.

In fairness, since Agenda 2063 was adopted, it seems that African ministers responsible for civil registration are beginning to wake up to the need to provide individuals with essential legal documents.  This new direction has been formulated more clearly in the so-called October 2019 Lusaka Declaration ¹¹.

 

Is legal identity digital identity?

It is not just tech-oriented organisations and the media that focus on ‘identity management solutions’ ¹² to replace old-fashioned physical ID cards and paper identification documents.  Multilateral and bilateral donors, intergovernmental- and non-governmental organisations also ¹³ focus on the tide of political will turning, as demonstrated by the SDGs and by emerging technologies and rising global connectivity.

One of the main advantages of moving towards digital identity management solutions is that digital identity is robust where papers are not ¹⁴.  I have written about the advantages of blockchain identity, especially for disadvantaged groups, here.  It is, however, worth remembering that although SDG 16.9 focuses on legal identity, it does not specify that it should be in electronic format.

 

Is the future now?

Can digital identity really be the solution when not every state can afford complex digital ID systems?  And when only some states have the right levels of connectivity for such a solution to work for people on the ground.  Poor access and administrative complexity make transaction costs of digital ID very high ¹⁵.  If countries, or whole continents like Africa, cannot afford those, should they wait for financial interventions that create expensive but unusable systems?  Or should they commit to doing what they can with the systems that they do have?

In other words, does the drive towards ‘solutions’ forget that there is no one way for someone to have a legal identity.  Ultimately, a large party of legal identity is about situating the individual into their wider society, their geographic region, their kinship groups, their close relatives.  I have argued that a birth certificate is the essential (and earliest) building block in creating an individual’s legal identity.  This is not least because they document age, place of birth and familial relationships right at the start.  Many societies, however get by and focus instead on a range of other documents that can achieve this.  Those include citizenship certificates, family and lodging books ¹⁶.

 

The solutions are modern but the problem is age old

The conversation on legal identity has for some time now focused on what technology can offer us by way of sophisticated methods and systems of creating, using and protecting our digital identity.   But for many states, with large populations and a large percentage of undocumented individuals, it may be better to go back to basics and focus on the available identity documents, systems and processes that can fulfil the function of creating a legal identity.  Perhaps the conversation on legal identity for all should focus on substance rather than form.