SUB REGIONAL OVERVIEW: ASIA Introduction to DigitalSOUTH ID Regional Overview Sub-regions Covered: East Asia, Central Asia, The Pacific, South Asia, Southeast Asia Introduction This Regional Overview synthesises findings from five sub-regional SEAP reports to map how legal identity, digital identity and data-governance frameworks are evolving across East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Pacific.1 It brings together country-level analysis on civil registration, national ID systems and emerging digital ID infrastructures to show how these layers interact in practice, and how they shape access to rights and services. This section provides a crosscutting view of the wider region, highlighting shared patterns and divergences that might not be visible when looking at each sub-region in isolation. As with the country factsheets and sub-regional overviews, the regional overview is organized thematically, beginning with legal identity systems, then turning to the rollout of digital identity, and the underlying legal and data-protection frameworks. Then, it proceeds to examine states’ international commitments and the implications of these systems for citizenship and nationality rights. Within each theme, this overview intends to draw out both common trends and practices that illustrate how different institutional choices can widen or narrow exclusion. Throughout, the text signposts readers to the five sub-regional SEAP reports, which provide more detailed country-bycountry information and case studies. Taken together, the aim of the regional overview is to equip readers with an accessible entry point of identity systems that span very different legal traditions, levels of digitalisation and political contexts and how they interact with the question of statelessness. Legal Identity Across four out of the five sub-regions (East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia), national ID cards, resident identity cards, or citizen ID cards, are used as the country’s primary legal identity document instead of birth certificates. The Pacific stands out in contrast to other subregions because nine out of the 17 countries rely on birth certificates instead of national ID cards (Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu). In countries across the Pacific where birth certificates are the primary legal document, it allows access to other foundational identity documents and access to services such as passports, voting, enrollment in schools, and health insurance. In the nine countries across the Pacific where birth certificates are their primary legal identity, birth registration depends heavily on the strength and accessibility of the State’s civil registration systems; geographic distance between islands and their registries; and the level of public awareness about birth registration.2 Most South Asian countries use national identity cards as the primary proof of legal identity. Nepal is the exception, where citizenship certificates serve as the official document instead.3 12 13 STATELESSNESS ENCYCLOPEDIA ASIA PACIFIC THIRD EDITION - REGIONAL OVERVIEW REPORT 2026