The Sustainable Development Goals and ‘legal identity for all’: ‘first, do no harm’ Bronwen Manby1 Draft accepted for publication by World Development 30 November 2020 Introduction In 2007, Simon Szreter, writing in this journal, urged attention by the development community to the human right to an identity, specifically ‘the right to have one’s legal identity and relationship to significant others publicly recognized, securely registered, and accessible for personal use’ (Szreter, 2007, p. 67). Considering the establishment of a national identity system through parish registers in 16th century England, he argued that: ‘The possession and use by citizens (not the central state) of an identity registration system was an information resource of great value to the individuals of the first society in the world to achieve economic development’ (Szreter, 2007, p. 72), and thus analogous systems would have significance for contemporary economic development in other states. In September 2015, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly endorsed this view of the importance of registration and identification for economic development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), painstakingly elaborated by the combined mass of global development actors, established the target that states should, by 2030, ‘provide legal identity for all, including birth registration’. The foundational significance of this target, Target 16.9, was emphasised by its allocation to Goal 16, which has the overarching ambition to ‘Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels’ (SDG 16, 2015). The indicator adopted to show progress towards the target was the percentage of children under five whose birth is registered. Target 16.9 was one of the least controversial to adopt, with those involved reporting little discussion of the target during the negotiations surrounding the SDGs. But since the adoption of the SDG target those seeking to implement it have been struggling to define what it means: ‘legal identity’ was not a term that had any pre-existing definition in international law. It seems that different agencies and interest groups are interpreting the SDG target on legal identity according to their own priorities, whether they be child protection, national planning, economic development, social protection systems, public health, national security, consolidation of national identity, the ending of statelessness, or, indeed, rent-seeking by those responsible for contracting new systems. Among the interest groups are the multinational companies with capabilities in new digital and biometric technologies involved in the provision of identity documents. 1 Senior policy fellow and guest teacher, London School of Economics and Political Science. Many thanks to Simon Szreter, Alan Gelb, Jaap van der Straaten, Mia Harbitz, Keith Breckenridge, Edgar Whitley, the World Bank ID4D team, and two anonymous reviewers, for their very valuable comments on drafts of this article. 1