2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(2) the pandemic will reverse decades of progress in terms of poverty reduction. It calls for greater investment in data and statistical systems to measure achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (‘SDGs’);9 whether any progress has or can be made when access to social development policy and programs increasingly is made contingent on having an ID remains to be seen. The continued underdevelopment of stateless populations and others lacking civil registration may not be visible in states’ reporting on the SDGs if some 67 indicators are derived from information contained in civil registration and vital statistics systems.10 Second, the development lens is useful to question the assumption that identification and registration drives will lead to the provision of legal identity for an unqualified all. As Hayes de Kalaf notes, historically: … the use of large-scale identification practices has led to atrocious human rights abuses … particularly for … individuals who, due to their race or national origin, do not always fit comfortably within state-centred, ideological and white-centric notions of who merits membership of the ‘imagined community’.11 Those of us studying statelessness can build on this research by continuing to examine what is actually being done in the name of ‘modernisation’ and ‘inclusion’, and what practices — good and bad, but never neutral12 — biometric technologies enable.13 Following Hayes de Kalaf’s lead, one could examine the impacts of the ‘good practices’ that international organisations share with states, such as linking birth registration to social welfare entitlements as an incentive for parents to register their children.14 As the Dominican case study makes clear, this practice can have the opposite effect for populations that do not fit state prescriptions of who merits membership. Researchers might also wish to build on 9 10 11 12 13 14 United Nations, The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2021 (United Nations Dept of Economic and Social Affairs 2021) <https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2021/TheSustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2021.pdf>. Irina Dincu, Shaida Badiee and Deirdre Appel, Birth Registration Is the Basis for Advancing Gender Equality and Children’s Rights (International Development Research Centre, Perspectives, 22 February 2018) <https://www.idrc.ca/en/perspectives/birth-registrationbasis-advancing-gender-equality-and-childrens-rights>; Samuel Mills and others, ‘Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) for Monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’ (World Bank 2017) <http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/979321495190619598/pdf/115150-WPCRVS-for-Monitoring-the-SDGs-web-version-May-18-2017-PUBLIC.pdf>. Hayes de Kalaf (n 1) 4, citing Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso 1983). This is a reference to the now infamous Kranzberg law put forth by historian of technology, Melvin Kranzberg, which states that ‘[t]echnology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral’ in Melvin Kranzberg, ‘Technology and History: Kranzberg’s Laws’ (1986) 27 Technology and Culture 544, 545. For a fascinating set of conversations on the complex and contradictory ways in which Indigenous, Afro-descended, and nonbinary populations, among others, experience ID systems and exclusion from citizenship and social policy, see the recordings of the June 2021 conference organised by Dr Hayes de Kalaf at the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies/University of London and ISI, School of Advanced Study, ‘(Re)imagining Belonging in Latin America and Beyond — Day One’ Youtube (Video, 7 July 2021) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_8eey3PF1Q&t=321s>; School of Advanced Study, ‘(Re)imagining Belonging in Latin America and Beyond — Day Two’ Youtube (Video, 13 July 2021) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iQkTjBitNY&t=2s>. World Bank, Incentives for Improving Birth Registration Coverage: A Review of the Literature (World Bank Group 2018) vii <https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/928651518545413868/Incentives-forImproving-Birth-Registration-Coverage-A-Review-of-the-Literature.pdf>. 368