Percy Santos, a visually impaired college student in Honduras, recently received his digital ID card from the government. “The new ID is perfectly designed for people like me. This is personal fulfillment. I feel more identified,” he says.
Mr Santos is one of the 5.4 million people registered in the new Honduras population database set up in the country with help from the UN Legal Identity project, which has a special focus on indigenous peoples, LGBTQI+, minorities and people with disabilities lays. Thanks to the digital card, he now has easy access to social benefits.
Not only has the new system made life easier for people like Mr. Santos, but it has also helped the Honduran authorities create a more robust electoral database, significantly improved the voting system in the 2021 elections and helped to reduce distrust in the voting system.
The chances of leading a life without a legal identity are very slim. It’s much harder to get a job in the formal economy and more likely to benefit during pandemics like social protection or basic healthcare systems COVID-19, or in times of conflict or climate emergency, be negligible. The lack of a legal identity is likely to impact insurance, pensions, or even basic utilities like water, phone, and gas connections.
The Honduras project is just one example of how the UN is supporting countries in their attempts to set up national population registers, national ID systems or digital ID programs.
Sierra Leone: Identification of those displaced by conflict
In Sierra Leone, years of armed conflict and the associated widespread human rights violations have led to significant internal displacement and statelessness.
The UN Development Program (UNDP) and partners are supporting the authorities in integrating the displaced, stateless population so that undocumented people can obtain a National Identification Number (NIN).
This means they can get a driver’s license, apply for formal employment, and most importantly, have a legal identity. For the government, this means keeping tabs on tax revenues, reducing corruption, conducting proper checks and balances, and increasing security.
Thanks to these efforts, Sierra Leone now has a digital record of six million people who were previously undocumented.
Zambia: Strong increase in registered births
The UN has been a key partner in making registration in Zambia more accessible by helping the government install an integrated and digital national registration system covering Zambians from birth to death in different areas of the country. The same legal identity works in both vaccination and enrolling children in school.
As a result, Zambia has seen an increase in birth registration from 14.3 percent to 84 percent as of 2022.
“In addition to ensuring legal identity from birth to death and its contribution to safeguarding internal security, the integrated national reporting system is intended to provide reliable and timely vital statistics for planning purposes and the targeted delivery of social services to eligible populations,” says Jacob Jack Mwiimbu , Minister of Home Affairs and Internal Security of Zambia.
Mozambique: A “groundbreaking initiative”
Mozambique, which has a low level of personal registration — 12.1 percent of deaths and 49 percent of births are registered — is one of the pilot countries on the United Nations’ Legal Identity Agenda.
As part of the project to improve the registry and national identity database, the UN country team developed a plan to improve these numbers and create systems for civil registry, vital statistics and identity management.
The project was praised by the senior UN official in Mozambique, Myrta Kaulard. “The Legal Identity Agenda is a groundbreaking initiative to benefit from migration and guarantee the rights of those in the country,” says Ms. Kaulard.
