AHMR African Human Mobilty Review - Volume 8 No 3, SEP-DEC 2022 struggle for identification, recognition, and borderline impositions. The inclusion of stateless and vulnerable persons in global development discourse, a previously neglected concern, as implied, occupies a primacy in the SDG aim to ‘provide legal identity for all’ by 2030, including birth registration.38 While this is praiseworthy, it is subject to criticism due to a lack of clear definition and link with the ‘right to a nationality’. While the SDGs take birth registration as attaining legal identity, this may not be the case, as many stateless persons and communities exist even with their births registered. Advocacies for independent oversight of executive decisions on legal identity may be reinforced by regulation of enrolment processes and reforms of nationality laws. These can enhance effective public-driven identity schemes.39 The challenges associated with the trends of birth registrations, technological solutions to legal identity problems, and the risks of identification systems, particularly in the Global South, where a significant population at risk of statelessness exists, can be further evaluated. Thus, the SDGs’ legal identity target can be refocused with priority on the ‘right to a nationality’ and practical measures for addressing the vulnerability of stateless persons. Unfortunately, the mismatch in citizenship laws, state collapse or changes in nationality laws, including denationalisation, i.e., the removal of a person’s citizenship, have potentially rendered many people stateless.41 Yet, complex and multi-faceted, contentions about appropriate responses to address the rising trend of statelessness have amplified concerns for the victims’ rights eligibility and legal personhood. Understanding statelessness and developments requires the need to link the increasing deprivations, conditions of vulnerability, suspicion, and exclusion of stateless persons across the world, including people at risk of statelessness. Digging deeper into the SDGs unearths not only its provisions for stateless persons’ access to essential services, but its potential for preventing or addressing statelessness. However, some causes for concern regarding statelessness that need to be renegotiated, also become apparent upon its critical assessment. III. THE SDGS AND STATELESSNESS The purpose of development is to improve human well-being, address human security problems including poverty, and inclusively enhance opportunity. In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Global Agenda for Sustainable Development, replacing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (2000–2015). It comprised 17 goals across a broad range of areas and challenges to be addressed — including poverty, education, health, gender and inequality, climate change and justice. The 17 goals further encompassed a total of 169 targets, with Manby op cit note 35; Sperfeldt op cit note 35. Manby ibid. Sperfeldt op cit note 35. 41 Matthew J Gibney 'Should citizenship be conditional? The ethics of denationalisation' (2013) 75 The Journal of Politics at 646. 38 39 40 64