technologies in their registration processes with the dual aims of streamlining humanitarian assistance and providing more efficient social protection to vulnerable populations.²² In some contexts, digitisation efforts have been tested on migrants and refugees.²³ Nonetheless, the negative impacts involved in the push for digital identities are increasingly coming to light. For general populations, these effects may predominantly relate to intrusive state surveillance and the right to privacy.²⁴ For stateless and undocumented persons, digitised systems in some situations can also entrench exclusions. As stated by the UN Special Rapporteur on Racism: “ Governmental and humanitarian biometric data collection from refugees and migrants has been linked to severe human rights violations against these groups, notwithstanding the bureaucratic and humanitarian justifications behind the collection of this data. Furthermore, it is unclear what happens this collected biometric data and whether affected groups have access to their own data. ²⁵ At the 2019 World Conference on Statelessness, researchers and policy experts noted a number of risks associated with statelessness in the implementation of digital identity and citizenship registration schemes.²⁶ • Firstly, they underlined the importance of having legislative and policy structures in place prior to digitisation, to ensure that the provision of legal identity is not discriminatory or arbitrary. They warned without these structures, “even a welldesigned digital solution will replicate exclusionary • practices already in place, not only leaving those unable to obtain documentation even further behind but effectively locking them out from the system for good.”²⁷ • Secondly, it was noted that centralised databases were linked to one unique identifier, number or a Single Source of Truth (SSOT). When access to all service and rights is contingent on one source, it can make the lives of the stateless or undocumented increasingly precarious. Errors in data entry or being logged under a category of “foreign” can have the devastating effect of locking people out of socioeconomic and political participation. This can reduce the coping and survival strategies available to persons with precarious legal status. • A third risk identified was that the digital ID sector is dominated by unsupervised private companies with “no normative structure, appropriate legal framework, centralised supervisory body and no civil society participation.” Without a regulatory framework, it is difficult to ensure that systems are accountable to populations on the ground, particularly marginalised communities. Thus, it is more difficult to ensure the “do no harm” approach that should guide all international development initiatives. There are several examples of where digital identity systems have produced and entrenched exclusions, rather than enhanced social protections and alleviated poverty.²⁸ In the Dominican Republic, for example, against the backdrop of the deprivation of citizenship of Dominicans of Haitian descent, providing legal identities for all resulted in birth records for Dominicans of Haitian descent being transferred to a ‘foreign’ register. This undermined their citizenship claims, thereby barring them from equal access to education, employment and social welfare.²⁹ These issues have also been brought to light in Kenya, where a National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS) registration was to be ²¹ Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, ‘Making SDG 16.9 work for the wider Sustainable Development Agenda: Lessons from the citizenship, statelessness and legal identity community’, (2019) available at: https://files.institutesi.org/legal_identity_policy_brief.pdf [accessed 13/11/2020] ²² IOM, ‘IOM and Biometrics’ (2018) available at: https://www.iom.int/sites/default/files/our_work/DMM/IBM/iom_and_biometrics_external_info_sheet_ november_2018.pdf [accessed 13/11/2020] The Engine Room, ‘Understanding the Lived Effects of Digital ID: A Multi-Country Study’, (2020) available at: https://digitalid.theengineroom.org/assets/ pdfs/200123_FINAL_TER_Digital_ID_Report+Annexes_English_Interactive.pdf [accessed 13/11/2020]; See also, UNHCR, ‘More than half a million Rohingya refugees receive identity documents, most for the first time’ (2019) available at: https://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2019/8/5d4d24cf4/halfmillion-rohingya-refugees-receive-identity-documents-first-time.html [accessed 13/11/2020] ²³ Ms. E. Tendayi Achiume, ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,’ A/75/590 (2020) available at: https://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/racism/srracism/pages/indexsrracism.aspx [accessed 13/11/2020] ²⁴ A. Gelb and A. Diofasi Metz, ‘Identification Revolution: Can Digital ID Be Harnessed for Development?’ Centre for Global Development, (2018) available at: https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/identification-revolution-can-digital-id-be-harnessed-development-brief.pdf [accessed 13/11/2020]; See also, M. G. Milone, ‘Biometric Surveillance: Searching for Identity’ (2001) 57 Business Lawyer 1, pages 497 – 512, available at: https://www.jstor.org/ stable/40688067?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents [accessed 13/11/2020]. For comprehensive coverage see: Privacy International, ‘A Guide to Litigating Identity Systems’ (2020) available at: https://privacyinternational.org/sites/default/files/2020-09/PI_A%20Guide%20to%20Litigating%20Identity%20 Systems_Biometrics.pdf [accessed 13/11/2020] ²⁵ Ms. E. Tendayi Achiume, ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,’ A/75/590 (November 2020) available at: https://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/racism/srracism/pages/indexsrracism.aspx [accessed 13/11/2020] 8