The Universal ID Council (UIDC) is a group of human rights activists, identity experts, and technology innovators with decades of experience around critical issues tied to identification rights and responsibilities. The Council was created to address an increasingly acute problem across the world: nearly one billion people lack access to proof of their identity, leading to devastating human rights infringement and unjust financial exclusion. Without a trusted, verifiable, and decentralized system to maintain a sovereign proof of identity for every person around the globe, unfathomable numbers of people will continue to be vulnerable to abuse, and unable to meaningfully participate in the global economic system.
The CEO of the Council, Dr. Mariana Dahan, brings her experience from The World Bank and the previous organization she has established, the World Identity Network Foundation (WIN Foundation), where she partnered with United Nations agencies, governments, NGOs, and the private sector to develop solutions to provide a resilient proof of identity for every human being on the planet. The Council builds on this extensive experience that includes high-tech pilot programs with national governments, fact-finding missions with the United Nations, and on-the-ground work with refugees and migrant populations.
As a culmination of these effort, we are releasing a new documentary movie about the world’s invisible populations, “Shadows in the Dark: Our Global Identity Crisis”, to share the stories of those impacted by lack of ID and what thew world’s superpowers envision for possible solutions.
Amplifying the mission of WIN Foundation and numerous partners and organizations in this field, UIDC is shining a light on one of the most overlooked human rights in the world – access to proof of one’s identity – and is articulating the need for a global, decentralized universal ID program that securely provides and augments the value of this proof.
A well-implemented program that is verifiable, but not controlled by a singular central authority, is critical to preventing a myriad of human rights abuses, but also necessary for the financial inclusion and insertion of over a billion people into the world economy.
Without the ability to prove one’s identity, any given person is by default excluded from an increasingly digitized and interconnected global economy. They are vulnerable to fraud, human trafficking, and social systems such as healthcare and electoral systems. This not only provides an environment rife with abuse, but renders them ‘invisible’ to the financial system, unable to hold bank accounts, utilize digital financial services, or meaningfully participate in ‘modern’ life. While many of these are regarded as basic human rights (e.g. freedom of movement, access to healthcare, ability to partake in the world economy), a more fundamental right that allows for all of these is often ignored: the right to prove who you are.
UIDC upholds the belief that access to identification is a basic human right, necessary for the practical application of other human rights, and an effective universal ID program is urgently needed to protect this right for everyone. While there are many potential solutions to this problem, we believe that it can only be widely accepted and applied if it is through a practical, borderless system that is already globally respected and accepted. For this reason, UIDC is specifically interested in revolutionizing how the global financial system provides access, in a way that allows for the effective inclusion of everyone through the axiom of Fair Access, without bias against borders, citizenship, or other social constructs.
We believe that a financial system following this fair access ethos of self-sovereignty and inclusion will necessarily include a verifiable, decentralized universal ID program at its foundation, providing a practical solution to effectively fulfill the right to identification for everyone in the world.
Learn More About a Potential Financial Solution »
We believe that there are six key features, or core principles that a successful Universal ID program must possess:
- Self-Sovereign: The identity data for any individual may be verified by third parties, but it must be owned and controlled by each individual themself.
- Decentralized: No singular authority should control or possess the ability to edit the identity data, to prevent potential abuse.
- Secure: The data cannot be hidden, deleted, stolen, or otherwise abused or tampered with on the system.
- Access: The system must be accessible to every person on the planet to meet the standard of ‘universal’.
- Valid: The system must be recognized and trusted by authorities around the world in order to ensure the credibility of the identity data sustained by it.
- Practical: The program must be implemented in a way that can be genuinely used for practical purposes.
These six fundamental principles are integral to the successful implementation of a Universal ID Program.
While there are many potential ways to guarantee the right to access one’s identity, the reality is that this is not currently a protected human right – and it needs to be. It is unacceptable that over an eighth of the world’s population is unable to participate in the world economy, remains practically invisible in formal society, and is vulnerable to some of the most egregious humanitarian atrocities because they lack the ability to prove their own identity. The Universal ID Council will continue to work with governments, intergovernmental institutions, NGOs, financial institutions and individuals themselves to motivate the need for a universal ID program, and aid in the effective implementation of such a system.