2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(2) such as a birth certificate or an identity card — confirming that official registration. The UN responded to the World Bank’s initiatives by the establishment of an inter-agency Legal Identity Expert Group in 2018, which managed to come to an agreed definition of ‘legal identity’ — in language that underlines both the significance of the concept and the difficulty of tying down what it means in simple terms acceptable to all those interested in the outcome: Legal identity is defined as the basic characteristics of an individual's identity. e.g. name, sex, place and date of birth conferred through registration and the issuance of a certificate by an authorized civil registration authority following the occurrence of birth. In the absence of birth registration, legal identity may be conferred by a legally-recognized identification authority. This system should be linked to the civil registration system to ensure a holistic approach to legal identity from birth to death. Legal identity is retired by the issuance of a death certificate by the civil registration authority upon registration of death. 110 The definition, adopted for what is now the UN ‘Legal Identity Agenda’, highlights the importance of civil registration, in particular birth registration, to the idea of legal identity. Although it omits nationality as part of identity (by contrast to art 8 of the CRC), it pushes back against an approach based on biometric enrolment of any resident without distinction. If an adult registration process is undertaken, the UN considers it must be linked to the civil register rather than free standing: the Aadhaar approach thus does not ‘provide legal identity’ under this definition. This is important for those interested in the eradication of statelessness. Although birth registration does not (usually) record nationality or legal status in a country, it does record the information on the basis of which nationality, and many other rights, may be claimed. The ‘foundation’ it creates for recognition of a person’s legal identity is thus stronger (or ‘thicker’) than an approach based solely on biometric identifiers. Death registration is also important for the recognition of elements of the legal identity, and associated rights, of spouse and children (the legal identity of the deceased in fact lives on in this record). Civil registration generally, including marriage registration, is critical to legal status, especially for rights based on family connections, including nationality: this applies both in countries where nationality is attributed based on birth in the territory, and in those where legally recognised descent from a citizen (or a person resident in the country at a certain date) is the rule. Operational Guidelines were adopted under the auspices of the Legal Identity Expert Group in May 2020 for UN country teams, ‘to support a cohesive approach across the United Nations system’. 111 This document continues the process of providing greater definitional clarity, and emphasises the importance of setting the SDG Target within a human rights framework, including the protection of migrants, refugees and the forcibly displaced. But although the difficulties created for migrants by lost or destroyed civil status documents are highlighted, 112 the guidelines do not consider or propose solutions for the difficulties of cross-border 110 United Nations Strategy for Legal Identity for All (Concept Note, United Nations Legal Identity Expert Group 2019) 3 [12]. 111 Implementation of the United Nations Legal Identity Agenda: United Nations Country Team Operational Guidelines (Operational Guidelines, United Nations Legal Identity Expert Group, United Nations Development Programme and UNICEF May 2020) 7 <https://unstats.un.org/legal-identity-agenda/documents/UNCT-Guidelines.pdf>. 112 ibid 70. 268