In today’s digital and interconnected economic landscape, lacking a proof of identity can exclude individuals from participation in the modern society. Recognized human rights such as the freedom to traverse borders, the right to healthcare, to education and inclusion in the global marketplace are all predicated on a more elemental right — one that is often neglected: the right to establish and affirm one’s identity.
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.
We believe that there are several core 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 the individuals themselves.
- 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.
- Accessible: 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 resonate with The World Bank’s Principles on Identification and other globally recognized efforts in this field.
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 global and ubiquitous. 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.