already living in extreme poverty, who faced severe problems accessing their human right to health and social security because of issues relating to Ndaga Muntu. Those stories were confirmed when we spoke to 162 health workers and administrators and 34 local government officials across the six districts we visited, as well as hospital directors and staff from several facilities near the capital of Kampala. A similar picture emerged when we were present during several SCG distribution days and spoke with beneficiaries, their family members and other helpers, local officials, and payment service providers. We also observed efforts by local government officials to undertake a ‘data validation’ exercise in order to determine how many older people in their communities either had errors on their national IDs or had been unable to register; several senior sources have since confirmed to us that the preliminary data from this exercise indicates that the number of affected people totals at least 50,000 people, which is likely still an undercount. Given the fact that the Uganda Bureau of Statistics projected that in 2021 there are around 197,700 people above 80 years old, the level of exclusion from Ndaga Muntu among older persons in Uganda is enormous.23 Beyond health care and social assistance, women and older persons may also find themselves unable to obtain a mobile phone,24 to stand for election,25 get a bank account,26 or even access government buildings and travel freely throughout Uganda and the East Africa region. For those without the Ndaga Muntu, their very identity as a Ugandan can be called into question, as the card has become the primary means of proving Ugandan citizenship.27 The inability to obtain a Ndaga Muntu therefore truly equals a form of ‘social death’, where not having a card prevents one from participating fully in society, and may sometimes even result in actual death. 3. The dream of inclusion versus the harsh reality of exclusion Our research suggests that the Ndaga Muntu is a national security tool that has caused severe exclusion, thereby affecting the human rights of millions of people in Uganda. However, we do not mean to dismiss out of hand the promise of social inclusion that has often been tied to national digital ID systems, especially in international development discourse. Digital ID systems are not inherently bad and the exclusionary reality we encountered in Uganda was certainly not inevitable. The government of Uganda has embraced the global development imperative to ‘leave no one behind,’ which is a pillar of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Uganda’s Second National Development Plan, launched in 2015, stated that “an inclusive development agenda promoting employment and universal social policies is key to rapid economic and social transformation.”28 Goal 16.9 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda calls on States to “provide legal identity for all [by 2030], including free birth registration.”29 Many development actors have emphasized the important role that ‘legal identity’ can play in realizing such aims, even though that term has been given very different meanings by different international organizations active in the development field. People without access to legal identity have been portrayed as being ‘invisible’ because their existence is not formally recorded by any State institution.30 This agenda has been animated by the recognition that over one billion people around the world do not have How a National Security Approach to Uganda’s National Digital ID Has Led to Wholesale Exclusion of Women and Older Persons 11