The Hague Colloquium on the Future of Legal Identity
Between April 20 and April 24, 2015, the Centre for Civil Registration for Development (CRC4D) and the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) will host a group of researchers and practitioners in The Hague to consider the significance of the basic institutional choices that now confront states around the world.
Many countries, but especially the poorest countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia, face a choice in the current generation in the development of the most basic administrative systems that states use for registering the identities of their people. These registration infrastructures are of tremendous significance to the architecture of states, setting the limits of administrative capacity and citizens' entitlements, the media they interact with and the key agents of institutional development. In the simplest terms the states and policy makers face a choice between two sets of practices and plans. On the one hand are older (often pen- and paper-based) state systems for establishing and recording civil registration events: births, deaths, marriages, divorces especially. On the other, are newer computerised registration systems using biometric databases and devices.
Over several centuries countries in the West and the Far East have been successful in reaching registration completeness. But there are now over 100 countries where registration stagnation has been common, and investment in civil registration systems has been negligible. Many of the same countries are now replacing their national IDs or introducing them anew, often at high cost. And biometric identity cards are increasingly being used for the delivery of basic government services throughout the global South.
At this colloquium social scientists and policy researchers will examine the various forms of civil registration and identification currently used and introduced around the world to consider the opportunities and implications of the choices that poor states, in particular, currently face. The conference will allow participants to consider what is now a formidable body of established research across many fields, but it will also allow them to commence mapping out a set of comparative questions that will frame research and support policy makers in designing the best possible recommendations for the states that must still confront the intractable difficulties of mass identity registration.
Three-term Dutch minister for Development Cooperation Dr J P Pronk will deliver a keynote address at the colloquium.
More information on the colloquium, including information about the 32 participants, the abstracts of their papers and the panel themes can be found at this URL: http://wiser.wits.ac.za/
The organisers invite those who would like to receive further information about this project to submit their contact information to the on-line form at http://wiser.wits.ac.za/
Press-release issued by:
Keith Breckenridge, WISER, University of the Witwatersrand, (keith@breckenridge.org.za)
Jaap van der Straaten, Centre for Civil Registration for Development, (jvanderstraaten@crc4d.com)
Johannesburg/The Hague, 31 March 2015.