Policy Brief “Legal Identity” and Biometric Identification in Africa Bronwen Manby, Visiting Senior Fellow, LSE Human Rights, and research fellow Middle East Centre, London School of Economics There is near-universal consensus on the importance of “legal identity” as a foundation for economic development and respect for rights. But insufficient attention is paid to the risks attendant on a drive to roll out biometric identification systems in fulfilment of this promise. “Legal identity” and the Sustainable Development Goals In September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), an ambitious set of objectives for international development to replace and expand upon the fifteen-year-old Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted in 2000. Goal 16 of the SDGs is one of the broadest: “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”. Each Goal has a set of more detailed targets: Target 16.9 requires that states should, by 2030, “provide legal identity for all, including birth registration”. The consensus in development policy circles on the benefits of stronger identification systems appears now complete—certified by the World Bank’s decision to establish a program on “identification for development”. This policy agenda is founded on solid scholarship investigating the importance of registration and identification for state consolidation and effectiveness (for example, Caplan and Torpey 2001, Szreter 2007, Breckenridge and Szreter 2012). State consolidation and effectiveness, of course, also has its downsides. Other scholars have emphasized the equal contribution that registers of people and property have made towards the enabling of authoritarian regimes (most influentially, Scott 1999), and the uses of identification for surveillance and control (Torpey 2000, Bennett and Lyon 2008). There is still much confusion over the exact meaning of the SDG’s commitment; and thus still much at stake in the way it is interpreted. While birth registration is wellunderstood, and has been the subject of international agreements and technical assistance over some decades, “legal identity” has no definition in international law and there is no clarity on what its delivery would require (Gelb and Manby 2016, Manby 2017). Perhaps most importantly, there is confusion as to whether the SDGs require the issue of some sort of government-backed national identity card, or if birth registration is http://community.apsanet.org/migrationcitizenship/home 54