International ID Day – who’s it for? (ep. 6)

Matching the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 16.9 for legal identity for all by 2030, the identity-promoting organization ID4Africa calls on countries to mark 16/09 as International Identity Day or ID Day. It also calls on the UN to recognize the occasion.

In this episode we talk to the authorities in Uganda which marked the day by trying new ways to reach people to register for birth certificates and the national ID.

Uganda has been heavily criticized over the impact of low registration rates: people are denied health and welfare services. While government could remove the identity barriers to access, if it is to pursue registration, how will ID Day help?

Faridah Nassozi and Edwin Tukamuhebwa of NIRA – Uganda’s National Identification and Registration Authority – discuss successes and challenges.

https://www.nira.go.ug/home

Private sector companies state how they mark the day and what it means for them now and next: HID Global, Suprema ID and Tech5.

Some see International Identity Day as becoming overly commercialized and a supportive tool for governments to implement exclusionary identity systems. We hear from Tom Fisher, Senior Researcher at Privacy International, on what other impacts the day can have, and also how a day to mark identity issues can have some positives.

https://privacyinternational.org

Find out more about the ID 16.9 Podcast and the importance of legal identity at https://id169.com

Produced and hosted by Frank Hersey at Biometric Update https://www.biometricupdate.com