A (3:02)

Yes, that's right, Rajesh. We identified at least 10 of the sustainable Development goals and targets where without people having id, it is very difficult to see how these goals and targets can be achieved. For example, there is a target on disasters, disasters relief. How do you deliver relief from disasters which destroy people's homes? They need means of support, they need funds for reconstruction. And there are examples of programs that use very highly developed identification programs to target relief very effectively to these people. Another example is social protection. There is a sustainable development goal on social protection and right now there are around 4 or 500 million people in the developing countries who are getting some form of transfer. Again, these transfers, whether to ordinary people or to refugees, are far easier to make and far more precise if the transfers can be directly to people. So you can trace the entire transfer right down from the entity that provides it right down to the person who receives it. So those are some of the examples. There are others on financial access, on gender equity. We have a number.

B (4:24)

Mariana, any more you can add to that?

C (4:27)

I think as Alan mentioned, there are at least 10, 10 clusters of sustainable development goals that can be enabled if a right and robust mean of identification is put in place. But when we looked with a second look at the, what is called now 2030 Agenda, we realized that almost every target needs a form of identification for someone to be able to access that right, that service. So I actually think we should have a second chance to read and go.

B (5:03)

Beyond those, almost every target. So I mean, some of them, there's 169 targets.

C (5:11)

Absolutely.

B (5:12)

And some of them, you know, have been. Some would question them being in there. Many have said there's too many targets. I mean things like sustainable tourism is one of them. So there's an identity component to that.

C (5:25)

How can you travel without an identity document? And how can you control all the cross border migration that we have? That's another area that can be aided through a form of identification.

B (5:39)

And you mentioned it earlier. One of the kind of key goals, I suppose is gender equality. How important is identity for that?

C (5:46)

Well, it, it appears that a woman who doesn't have a valid form of identification cannot assert her own rights, but also cannot access property, cannot claim the right to divorce and then to inherit whatever she's entitled to as part of the marriage she was participating. So indeed, a woman needs an ID to also vote and to also access educational opportunities, economic opportunities, financial inclusion. So I really see identification as a red thread through the entire 2030 agenda.

B (6:28)

And there's also Some examples aren't there. I think it's in Malawi of an identification system. Is it in a bank where the identifier is. Is it a woman's thumbprint so that a man can't claim the.

A (6:42)

Yes, there is a bank, Opportunity International in Malawi, which is quite a big bank. It's about 500,000 clients. And one of the things they do is they identify their clients uniquely through fingerprints when they enroll. And they have to be able to present that in order to access funds. And they found that, for example, when a woman's husband dies, the relatives may want to come and claim the assets that she has, but they're unable to get the financial assets because they cannot even if they take her savings book or, you know, they can't get it without her own participation, without her fingerprints. So that bank, not surprisingly, has a lot of women clients.

B (7:32)

If identification is crucial to, as you say, almost all of the SDG targets, does that make the target on identification more important than the others?

C (7:44)

Well, I certainly believe that if the targets are in the 2030 Agenda, all of them have equal right to be there. All of them are important. However, I see some targets can act as enablers to others. And that is the not the case for every target, but certainly it Is for Target 16.9.

B (8:08)

Let's talk a little bit about children. We mentioned at the beginning that some 650 million children around the world have not been registered at birth. Is birth registration enough to solving the problems of not having identity?

A (8:23)

I think, you know, by the way, I should mention there are many more children who have been registered at birth, but but don't actually have birth certificates. So children are often registered, but then they don't receive a certificate, so they can't prove that they've been registered. And often it's very difficult to find records of birth registrations in registries because they're not being kept very well. So there are problems actually that go beyond simple birth registration.

B (8:49)

So you could address that and you could register every child at birth and give them a birth certificate. Would that solve the problem problems of identification? Or are there different things here that we need to think about?

A (8:59)

No, I think one has to go further. And one of the problems we see is that in many countries the birth registration process is not properly integrated into an identification process, which matters more as people grow older. So in many countries, for example, there is a break in the identification system between birth registration and what we could call national registration or civil identification. And sometimes that has to fill in for birth registration. That hasn't happened. But even if you have birth registration at some point later on, usually around 15, 17, something like that, a well working system will provide credentials for people that they can use as an adult. Because I mean, anyone can present a birth certificate. But how do you know that this is the person referred to on the certificate? So that's not enough alone. And there have been many cases of birth certificate fraud.

B (9:59)

And so the work you've been doing has been also looking, amongst other things, at the use of biometric identification to actually have a secure way of identifying people. I know you went off to Indonesia earlier in the year and you brought some great pictures back with you of kids being registered. So tell us a little bit then both of you in fact, about what your work has shown or is showing that can be done to address the problem and what is being done.

A (10:24)

Okay, well, yes, I have been looking at biometric identification for several years and how it's being used in developing countries. And of course, you know, it's not the complete answer. Nothing on its own is the complete answer. But it is a very useful technology, especially when you don't have very well organized civil registries. And that's one reason why it's being used in countries almost like leapfrogging. Countries that don't have a strong infrastructure of traditional registries are able to establish an identification baseline and people can then be authenticated against their credential very directly. Or as in the case of India, even with their system, there's no credential at all. They're just authenticated against their iris scans or their fingerprints. So it's a very useful technology indeed. And almost, I would say almost all of the new systems which are going in now, which have been going in over the last 10 years, have used it in some way or another.

B (11:26)

And Marianne, you've been a core part of a broad range of work that the World bank has been doing in this area. It's lending program called ID4 Development ID4D. Tell us a little bit about that.

C (11:38)

Yes, indeed. At the World bank we've launched last year the Identification for Development Agenda. And it was for us a way to conceptualize a coherent approach to how should we address the specific target in the Sustainable Development Goals agenda and also how can we help client countries address this problem in their countries. First, I think what we tried to convey as a message to the international donor community and then the broader stakeholders is to understand, like Alan just mentioned, that the target, as it is stated today, conflates two different, though similar notions but with distinct applications, birth registration, registration and legal identity. And that sometimes there is a disconnect in client countries where in between two different registration processes, which happens in many of our client countries, could be a disconnect and millions of people can go through that gap so that we don't know what is their status, what opportunities can they access, what healthcare, education, etc. So, so we tried to convey this message through the usual processes of consultations that have taken place in shaping up the Agenda 2030. And we were happy that the goal has been endorsed by the majority of the stakeholders. Right now we are in the process of figuring out the core indicators to measure progress. And while there is a very clear understanding on what should be the indicator to measure birth registration in countries, there is almost none on the side of the legal identity. And how should countries approach this? So we've created at the World Bank a working group that includes membership from 12 different entities. And you know, the bank is a very big institution with more than 12,000 people. So it is really unique that so many different global practices entities of the World bank have rallied behind this agenda to come up with a shared vision, common understanding. And then that is something that we would like our client countries to mirror as well. We'd like them to set up structures like that in their agencies, governmental agencies, other stakeholders participating, so that there are more people involved in the process, aware of it, and then participating. So the lending that we are able to provide then would ensure that we are not funding siloed initiatives or something that is built in a very fragmented, disparate way. We would like to help set up a platform that would be an identification system supporting foundational restoration, but also functional uses, meaning multisectoral applications of the IDs, so that there is a real use of the investment made and real benefit to the people in the end.

B (15:07)

You talked about how the World bank program on ID4D, ID4 development is cross cutting across global practices, which is, I guess, a recognition of the importance of identification in many areas of development. But I want to get a sense from both of you what progress is being made. Mariana, you also mentioned that there aren't really any good indicators for how do you measure legal identity. So what progress is being made? I mean, is this a losing battle or are we winning it?

A (15:37)

No, I certainly don't think it's a losing battle at all. So what has happened is that many more countries have introduced ID programs or strengthening their ID programs. And judging by the number of programs and probably by the number of People covered. If you take for example, just what is happening in India with the Adha program, which from nothing several years ago has registered what, 920,930 million people. A country like Uganda has developed an ID program very rapidly. So there are examples and I think if one has data for time, you will see the number is going up. But the important thing now is to make sure that investment is well used and integrated into the, into programs. So, so that it helps people to have bank accounts, for example, it perhaps helps to monitor credit through credit bureaus, which is another use of this, so that you can strengthen the financial system. And so it's not just creating it, it's making sure that it's used. And I certainly don't think it's a losing battle because countries are making progress.

B (16:45)

If policymakers are listening to this, what is your key takeaway for them? What should they take away from this on the whole ID SDG debate? Mariana?

C (16:55)

Well, if I had to be brief, I would just say that the problem at hand today is less the lack of implication and more the lack of focus. And if the policymakers, together with the development community would just focus their efforts towards the attainment of this SDG target, then we can certainly succeed.

A (17:20)

Yeah, I agree. I would say planning one has to think about this strategically as a foundation for all aspects of economic activity and also for many areas of policy. You know, you want to manage the public payroll, you want to make sure that teachers are paid, you want to make sure that transfers are received by the people, people who are supposed to receive them, or you want to make sure that your people can travel internationally. So how do you think about this in an integrated way? And how do you use the resources which you have your own resources, resources from the international community, how do you use them to achieve these goals? So I would like it to be a goal driven approach towards providing this for all kinds of applications.

B (18:05)

Okay, Mariana, Alan, great to have you both in the studio here. Thanks very much for joining us.

C (18:10)

Thank you, Rajesh.

B (18:11)

You can find out much more about CGD's work on identification and the SDGs. And the paper that Mariana and Alan have written together is on our website as well. It's@cgdev.org and don't forget to join me, Rajesh Merchandani, for the next podcast from the center for Global Development.