Today, an estimated one billion people around the world have no formal proof of identity, and many citizens continue to lack even the most basic form of documentation. Supported by the international development sector and met with enthusiasm from global tech companies, data controllers and industry specialists alike, the en masse registration of populations has exploded in recent years. Already a multimillion-dollar industry, the improved targeting and identification of individuals around the world is now a game changer on the international stage. Laurence Chandy, director of Data, Research and Policy at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), recently called the prioritisation of documentation within global policy, including the transition from paper to digital identity systems, ‘one of the most under-appreciated revolutions in international development’.

This chapter examines contemporary efforts to provide universal legal identity in accordance with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs aim to ‘provide [a] legal identity for all’ by 2030. This means that over the coming decade, states around the world will prioritise the implementation of registrations to ensure that every person on the planet obtains their own birth certificate. We will learn how important the concept has become for international development planning as it is widely assumed to foment the inclusion of all citizens and is therefore seen as a necessary tool in the fight against informality, under-documentation and statelessness.

Legal Identity and the Sustainable Development Goals: A Warning

In alignment with the expansion of neoliberal reforms, since the 1990s identity systems have grown to become a central pillar of the global world development agenda. Formal identification is now considered a ‘prerequisite for development in the modern world’ (Gelb and Clark, 2013) and policymakers have actively promoted the implementation of pro-poor policies that encourage the improved targeting, identification and documentation of domestic populations to ensure they can access any welfare payments or aid assistance to which they are entitled. International organisations have supported the expansion of identity measures that target the income-poor and the marginalised with particular zeal, often assuming systems that register and document individuals to be largely inclusionary.