Box 1. The right to legal identity within the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recognizes the role of identification in development. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 16), “Promote inclusive, just and peaceful societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels” sets a series of targets that will measure progress towards attaining this goal. One such target is: “By 2030 provide legal identity for all, including birth registration” (Target 16.9). Besides constituting an important indicator of inclusiveness in its own right, achievement of this target has also been recognized as an enabler to the realization of other SDGs (Gelb and Dahan 2015). To support the achievement of this SDG, a group of development partners, United Nations (UN) agencies, multilateral development banks, major nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and foundations have endorsed a common set of principles on identification for sustainable development that are fundamental to maximizing the benefits of identification for sustainable development. These principles encompass inclusion and the need to ensure universal access and accessibility: Ensuring universal coverage for individuals from birth to death free from discrimination Removing barriers to access and usage and disparities in the availability of information and technology Sources: Gelb and Dahan 2015; World Bank 2018e. This paper explores how gender-based legal differences and nationality laws limit women’s ability to obtain identification for themselves, their children, and, in the case of nationality laws, their spouses too. It brings together data and analysis produced by agencies working on legal barriers that pertain to their mandates— for example, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on birth registration, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on statelessness, and the evidence produced by the World Bank Group’s Women, Business and the Law and other legal sources. Its aim is to provide a comprehensive overview of the extent of gender-based legal barriers against women to ID and what is known about their impact on women, children, and excluded groups. Legal barriers to ID for women are often the result of prevailing social norms. They demonstrate deep rooted assumptions about the appropriate role of women in society and entrench women’s inequality with men in this sphere. Legal barriers to nationality are similarly grounded in patriarchal views of the family as well as in historical approaches to nationality as a basis for loyalty to one’s state.2 Identifying and addressing the specific barriers that women face to access identity for themselves and their children is therefore both a human rights issue and a development issue. Policy responses to incentivize legal reform in this area are not only needed to reach the development target of ‘legal identity for all’ but are also needed to increase women’s empowerment, financial inclusion, and labor force participation, thus unlocking crucial growth potential (McKinsey Global Institute 2015). We find that most countries do not explicitly prohibit women from applying for an ID or the associated foundational documentation for themselves or their children. Rather, in many countries, gender-based differences in laws and regulations make it more burdensome for a woman than a man to obtain an ID or the foundational documents needed to get one. This additional burden, when combined with other aspects of gender inequality that put women at a disadvantage (for example, lack of education, constraints to traveling far away from the home, limited access to cash or income, inability to use or access information and communication technology (ICT), and lack of household decision-making power), leads to the gender gap in ID access. This is a particular concern for women and children who may be at risk of statelessness, as will be discussed in detail in section II.d. 2 ACHIEVING UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO ID: GENDER-BASED LEGAL BARRIERS AGAINST WOMEN AND GOOD PRACTICE REFORMS