Optimistic plan would pair universal legal identity with basic income program

A new paper calls the lack of legal identity for millions of people around the world one of the “most morally grave public problems of our age,” and proposes an identity card system that would grant legal identity “regardless of nationality, ethnicity, geographic location, occupation, or any other personal attribute.”

Published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, the paper classifies the inability to obtain public recognition of one’s existence as a person alongside food insecurity and hunger as “the most severe deficiencies in vital and existential human capabilities,” which have led to “scandalous inequalities.”

There are an estimated 850 million people around the world who lack legal proof of identity, and addressing that lack is one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Identity exclusion is a focus of a recent report from Women in Identity.

“Lack of legal identity exposes global inequality in the domain of access to human rights,” it says. “If you cannot prove who you are, you are deprived of access to a host of public services such as public health care, legal protection in case of abuse, and all sorts of social welfare provisions.”

The authors, researchers from the Migration Policy Centre (MPC) at the European University Institute, propose a universal Humanity Identity Card (HIC), coupled with a Basic Income Supplement (BIS) of US$1 per day for “the most vulnerable half of the world’s population” –  defined here as those living on less than US$6.85 per day, or less than US$2500 per year.

The HIC “would permanently provide universal recognition of individual identity, while the BIS is designed to be gradually phased out as its benefits take effect.” (However, somewhat paradoxically, the paper says “the primary intended use of the HIC is to indicate whether the holder is eligible for a BIS.”)

Financial inclusion is a prominent enabler of the SDGs, according to the UN Capital Development Fund. Universal basic income was also central to World’s original pitch for identifying everyone in the world with its iris biometrics.

The Human Identity Card “could be distributed in a worldwide campaign through delegated offices of the UN or a specialised UN agency.”

“Individuals would register personally, free of charge, with their name, date and place of birth, photograph, fingerprint or iris scan recognition, and indication of whether they require food assistance.” The data would be “collected and stored exclusively by the UN with the proviso that it would not be shared with any other organisation, including sovereign states.”

While the proposal is admirable, some of its utopian aspirations are unlikely to be popular among certain powerful demographics – particularly its Robin Hood-esque financing structure. “A tax on sovereign states, billionaire companies and billionaire households is designed to fund this redistribution scheme,” it says. “The yearly tax could correspond to 0.66 percent of the GDP per capita for nations, 0.66 percent of market capitalisation for billionaire companies, and 0.66 percent of wealth for billionaires.”

Problematically, billionaire companies and individuals would almost certainly never agree to such a thing, nor would it be possible to enforce. Furthermore, the creation of a “UN Taxation Authority” to collect a universal global tax to fund universal legal identity would be liable to cause havoc among the segment of the population that already sees the United Nations as a globalist threat.

The authors concede that “non-compliance is a foreseeable obstacle,” but assert that the limited number of actors involved should protect against shady behaviours, such as tax evasion: “The fact that the number of taxpayers is extremely small would make them subject to visible public scrutiny.”

“We are fully aware that designing and implementing the HIC scheme is a complex endeavour that involves considerations of privacy, security, technology, international cooperation, and legal frameworks, which exceed the scope of this introductory proposal,” they write.

“While the UN should play a decisive and pivotal role, a global initiative of this nature shall require extensive collaboration between international organisations, governments, and private actors (particularly the previously mentioned taxpayers).”

Ultimately, the paper, which outlines a possible road map to implementation, has a benevolent idea for universal identity that it balances precariously on assumptions about the contemporary nature of shame; the likelihood of countries, organization and wealthy individuals to act in the interests of others; and the possibility of enforcement that would require the introduction, worldwide, of a new tax – perhaps the least popular political platform one could support.

“Once the proposal is adopted, even if there are some opt-outs, top-down UN campaigning can add traction to it,” the authors say, once again overestimating the UN’s power of coercion.

In the end, their pitch falls into the same category as a Star Trek Replicator or personal jetpack: a cool idea that would never work in practice.

Article Topics

digital identity  |  digital inclusion  |  financial inclusion  |  human rights  |  identity management  |  legal identity  |  SDG 16.9  |  social protection  |  United Nations