Legal Identity in the Sustainable Development Goals: Promises of Inclusion and Dangers of Exclusion

Featuring Christoph Sperfeldt, Handa Center Deputy Director for Southeast Asia

Statelessness and other forms of legal identity problems are a global phenomenon that affects millions of people worldwide. Those who find themselves without a recognized legal identity face daily obstacles resulting from a lack of access to a range of social, political and economic rights; all with significant adverse impact on their living conditions. When adopting the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in 2015, the UN General Assembly acknowledged that means to proving legal identity are linked to development opportunities and outcomes. The SDGs now aspire, under goal 16.9, ‘by 2030 [to] provide legal identity for all including birth registration’. By making the invisible legally visible, the SDGs promise to promote more inclusive development. However, requiring legal identity to enable access to rights and services could have the unintended effect of further excluding some of the most marginalized populations who face serious barriers in obtaining legal identity.

Building upon field research among minority groups in Cambodia, this presentation highlights the significance of SDG 16.9 for inclusive development, but also the risks associated with linking development to legal identification. At stake is not just a technocratic exercise of registering populations, but a highly contentious process of tackling identity politics and transforming deeply entrenched social realities.

Christoph Sperfeldt is the Handa Center's Deputy Director for Southeast Asia. In this capacity, he has supported human rights and justice sector research and capacity-building efforts. Prior to this, Mr Sperfeldt was Senior Advisor with the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Cambodia. Mr Sperfeldt is also a PhD candidate at the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), Australian National University.