Digital Exclusions: Legal Identity, Identification, and the Sustainable Development Goals in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Establishing one’s identity has become fundamental to modern life. Most people now need some official proof of legal identity for important aspects of their lives. Because of the interconnected nature of legal identity and access to rights, services and protections, legal identity has also become a critical factor in development, becoming a global development target in 2015. Target 16.9 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aims to “provide legal identity for all, including birth registration” by 2030. International development actors have identified a significant legal identity gap, with the World Bank estimating in 2023 that around 850 million people do not have any official government-issued proof of their legal identity. The phenomenon is particularly concentrated in low income countries, where close to 40 percent of adults do not have proof of their legal identity.