FRANK HERSEY: Welcome to the ID 16.9 podcast where we assess legal identity issues around the world and more specifically the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16.9 for legal identity for all including birth registration by 2030.

I’m your producer and host, Frank Hersey. In this episode we’re exploring another 16.9. Well not for Americans with your back to front dates. This is the 16th of the ninth, the 16th of September. It’s the date that identity promoting organization ID4Africa has chosen as International Identity Day. A it’s a date that’s catching on. In this episode we’ll hear from government, civil society and the private sector.

So back in 2018 ID4Africa at its summit in Abuja launched the day as a proposal and petitioned to the UN. ID4Africa hopes that the day will get full UN recognition in its calendar as a way to promote identity issues. A coalition of supporters was created where organizations could pledge their support. These include UN agencies, Mastercard, the World Bank GSMA and OpenCRVS who we heard from in episode three. This year the messaging has changed a little as the name continues to evolve to ID Day rather than International Identity Day, perhaps in response to the way it’s marked more locally around the world.

And for 2022, the fourth year of the event, there’s a new slogan, “Because everyone deserves an identity, identity deserves a day.” So that’s what ID Day is about. But what does it really mean? The day itself is becoming controversial among civil society organizations which raised concerns over the negative effects of national ID systems and their surveillance implications and warned that the day is becoming commercialized.

Dr Joseph Atick, the executive chair of ID4Africa highlighted this year that private companies in the ID sector are not eligible to join the coalition. Instead they can join the friends of the coalition category.

We’re going to hear from people from a range of areas in this episode: from Uganda about their activities to mark the day as part of their efforts to increase birth death and national idea registration, we have a few notes from the private sector throughout the episode and we’ll hear too from Privacy International about their views.

Let’s hear from HID Global which makes physical and digital ID products. This is Matt Winn, senior director for public relations and corporate communications on what ID Day means to them and how they market.

MATT WINN: HID is a friend of the International Identity Day Coalition. We’ve joined over 160 development agencies, government and public interest organizations who are coalition partners to support this initiative and the United Nations sustainability goal that calls for a legal identity for everyone,
including birth registration, by 2030.

This year we’ve engaged in a social media campaign to drive awareness that more than one billion people around the globe black illegal ID and why it matters to those of us who might take that for granted. We believe in making it possible for people to learn confidently, work productively, transact safely and travel freely. Legal identity for all is at the core of this belief. It’s a mechanism for increasing social justice and economic growth, securing and protecting citizens rights and enabling access to key services like education. Our goal in all of this is to effect this change through support of International Identity Day.

Here at HID we collaborate with governments to define and deliver scalable programs including civil registry and vital statistics that empower governments to record events such as births, deaths and marriages and then derive statistics from that data to inform their planning, decision making, and most importantly, delivery of critical services. In fact, here at HID we’re proud to support more than 60% of the world’s government ID programs.

FRANK HERSEY: Interesting to note the connection with legal identity and accessing government services as we explored in episode four. Let’s hear now from Suprema ID. This is Paul Kennedy, head of sales for Europe and Africa.

PAUL KENNEDY: Suprema ID fully supports the goal of SDG 16.9 to provide a legal entity for all by 2030. We applaud the initiatives being taken by governments around the world to meet this goal. Suprema ID firmly believes that everyone is entitled to an identity document, not only as a fundamental legal right but also as a means to have access to services such as banking, education, health, voting and to obtain documentation for international travel. Suprema ID manufactures and supplies technology to provide governments with the tools for biometric enrollment of citizens and verification of citizens at the point of service provision.

FRANK HERSEY: We now turn to Uganda to hear how they marked the day. Uganda has been heavily criticized for its requirements to register for national ID, Ndaga Muntu, to to be able to access services. People have been turned away from health services and the elderly in particular have struggled to receive welfare when they’ve been unable to register for the ID. The authorities are trying to increase registration in part with ID Day activities.

Joining me now from Kampala are Edwin Tukamuhebwa, manager of registration and operations at NIRA, Uganda’s national identification and registration authority, and Faridah Nassozi, client relations officer at NIRA, who was very much involved in marketing International Identity Day.

So general question to both of you, how did Uganda mark International Identity Day.

EDWIN TUKAMUHEBWA: Thank you, Frank. We are very glad to mark the International Identity Day on 16 of September in Kampala, Uganda here, and we organized activities which were interactive. So we decided to get out of our normal offices to go and interact with the public. So we have a place called the city square in the middle of the city, Kampala city, and other people refer to it as Constitutional Square. So on that day that’s where we set our offices. So we invited the public, it’s an open place, so the public came for an interaction, about any issue relating to identification and registration including birth registration and that registration by the way because they are part of the cycle of identity, of identification. So we offered a full blown service to the public in that place. So it was the one stop center for all services. Basically we would say that all the offices were actually shifted to that place to ensure that there is a complete interaction with the public.

FRANK HERSEY: Was that was that just in Kampala or was it in other parts of the country as well?

EDWIN TUKAMUHEBWA: It was in Kampala.

FARIDAH NASSOZI: Okay maybe to supplement, on top of the activities at the Constitutional Square, we also had a full page pullout in the biggest newspaper in the country, The New Vision, with questions and answers about International ID Day and what it means. So that one (inaudible) over the country. We also, like Edwin said, it also included (inaudible), so we had another team at one of the health centers in Kampala. (inaudible)

Maybe to add on that to elaborate more, when we mentioned that it was a full blown package service package it had a bit of information sharing, what we could call sensitization, education, and we had all the services, administration for identification services, replacement of the national ID, change of particulars on a national ID, and then birth and death registration. And also we had the legal team that was also providing the service on the side. So it was really an amazing outreach.

FRANK HERSEY: And so did you find that with having your staff, your colleagues out in the squares, in the health center, that it was easier for people to approach you and ask questions rather than even having to come into an office and find an office. Did you find there was less of a barrier for people to approach you?

EDWIN TUKAMUHEBWA: Yeah that’s that’s true people were extremely very comfortable with with that approaching us outside our office environment. So the city square or what other people call the Constitutional Square is just an open space. So it is in the middle of the city center. So everybody just passes by and and they were people were actually coming they found it extremely comfortable and easy for them to approach us.

FRANK HERSEY: And did you have any idea of the numbers of people who were there on the 16th? Were the were the stalls busy?

FARIDAH NASSOZI: At Constitutional Square, or city square, we served 695 clients.

FRANK HERSEY: And so do you know how many people might come into the office on a normal day? I mean so is you know 600, 700 people, is that a lot more than would normally come and get advice?

EDWIN TUKAMUHEBWA: We have very many registration centers that are scattered across the country. To be very exact, we have 117 registration centers scattered across the country, but the highest that does most normally receives an average of 180 clients in a day, and it is also in Kampala. I think, why we actually got a bigger number than what is realized at one of our busiest centers is because of being out there and the comfort over the people finding us.

FRANK HERSEY: Why did you choose that as an activity? I was wondering how you decided to have this big presence out in the open.

FARIDAH NASSOZI: I think one of the main things to demystify like you said when people are comfortable reaching us there, people see us in our business everyday and to see us out there, especially in the middle of town where everyone can just freely, people are passing, we had loudspeakers, so people just pass and say, what are you doing here today? NIRA you also come out to meet us, coming to you. So people really excited about the fact that we moved out of our offices and went to them.

EDWIN TUKAMUHEBWA: Frank, to supplement what Farida has said, we normally run outreaches, we conduct outreach is across the country but normally our outreaches target the rural areas because they find it a little challenging to move from their villages to our registration center. Now this one was conducted in the middle of the city and it was one of a kind, we had never done an outreach in the middle of the city. So it was unique in that way that the people of the city actually saw us in the middle of the city, outside our head offices, outside our registration centers, five registration centers that we have in Kampala city.

FRANK HERSEY: So this event was because of international Identity Day or ID Day and it seems like you had a good number of people compared to a normal day.
I was wondering whether you might consider doing an event, a similar event, more often, or is it something that you will save for ID Day each year. Do you think it needs to be a big occasion?

EDWIN TUKAMUHEBWA: Yes, we’ll actually do a bigger event come the next next ID Day because what from the experience that we got as we were sharing with you,
that people felt very comfortable, and besides by that providing the service, we want the information to reach each and every one. So come next year we’re going to run a full blown activity across all the districts and cities of Uganda. We have 136 districts and 10 cities in Uganda. So come next ID Day, each city, each district will be commemorating this this day and they will run activities in their areas of jurisdiction. But this time for specifically for Kampala we’ll plan to do something big because it is the heart of the country.

FRANK HERSEY: So I suppose this year was a sort of, well I don’t say practice because it was successful but it was you know the first step then it sounds like to doing something even bigger.

Did you have any support from any other countries who are also marking International Identity Day? Were you talking to ID4Africa, the organization, ahead? Did they help with planning or were there any private organizations helping or international organizations other than ID4Africa in setting it up? And then also in helping setting up, and then do you get together afterwards to discuss with other people the successes you’ve had and tips for each other for for next year?

EDWIN TUKAMUHEBWA: As usual, ID4Africa normally supports us, and still for this day they supported us with giving us information on promotional materials.
So we had promotional materials, they shared the information with us concerning the ID Day, so we went out there with their support because our teams were well briefed about the ID Day, they appreciated why it should be there and they explained it to the people. But as far as other countries coming in to support us, no, we run this activity as Uganda.

FRANK HERSEY: And I think that’s an interesting point because I think I’ve noticed a little bit of a trend with International Identity Day, and I think it was always part of it as well at the beginning, part of the plans, in that there’s almost two strands to it. There’s the international level where I know ID4Africa is hoping that the UN will recognize it as a day. But then it seems like it has to work for each individual country because it’s your own countries ID system that you’re helping people learn about or maybe even registering them on the day. So I suppose there’s two different levels to International Identity Day. And I was wondering whether it’s marked as an official day in Uganda, because I understand it is in Nigeria and Namibia? I was wondering if,
you know, whether the government is making it an official day for Uganda each year.

FARIDAH NASSOZI: Like we mentioned earlier, this was a first of its kind for us to celebrate it this way. And next year we intend to do bigger and better more across the country and hopefully then we are going to bring more stakeholders on board. Maybe will include private stakeholders, private companies and government stakeholders and hopefully also get bigger buying from the government. But for now it’s not an official holiday. It is recognized as International ID Day but it’s not an official holiday. It’s not a holiday.

EDWIN TUKAMUHEBWA: Maybe if I could actually do that, we will try to lobby the government to make it an official day. It may not in a society be a public holiday but it should be an official day so that we join the international community in commemorating this day. And also to help us push out the message to the public and also join the rest of our colleagues in other countries in celebrating and commemorating this day.

FRANK HERSEY: Yes. And I think that sounds like the overall aim of ID4Africa as well in promoting International Identity Day within the UN for that greater global recognition. For Uganda, we also have to think about legal identity. I suppose there’s the different layers of identity. There’s legal identity which the United Nations is marking with SDG 16.9 for legal identity for all including birth registration. And then there’s the other level with the actual national ID system that you have, the Ndaga Muntu, and I was wondering whether you find International Identity Day more useful for the drive birth registration and you know the the base layer of legal identity? Or is it more important for registering for national ID? Or is it for both?

EDWIN TUKAMUHEBWA: We run an integrated system where your registration is supposed to start with birth registration as proof of your legal identity. And it is at that point that you are assigned a NIN, a national identification number, which you run through with throughout your life and then you receive your national ID when you reach 16 years of age. So this campaign helped us to achieve both objectives. And as you noted in Faridah’s submission, she indicated that we run a birth registration campaign at one of the busiest centers in Kampala which is called (inaudible). So basically we run two activities at the same time but they were all complementing each other. So the day was actually important and it was relevant for both activities.

FRANK HERSEY: So I suppose I’m looking at it as an outsider looking at birth registration and national ID as more like two separate things. Do you think in general in Uganda people understand that you need the birth registration as part of registering for national ID? And so those two things are clearly part of International ID Day?

EDWIN TUKAMUHEBWA: I may not say that most people understand it because the institution mirror is six years older now but it’s part of our efforts that we’ve been undertaking to sensitize the public and educate them about birth registration and identification or registration. So right now it is a continuous activity in all the activities that we do where we emphasize it. The messages that we put out there emphasize the importance of birth registration and identification or registration. So it is an ongoing effort at this point. We can’t say that everybody understands those two processes very well but we hope we’ll get there.

FRANK HERSEY: And it sounds like the activities such as International Identity Day help you with that awareness raising with for example with your newspaper pull out. Is the hope that…

FARIDAH NASSOZI: Absolutely.

FRANK HERSEY: … that will make people more aware of, would you say the problem is awareness at all about registering or being able to access registration centers?

FARIDAH NASSOZI: I think it’s a bit of both. Like my colleague mentioned, we have offices 117 across the country, but still the country is big, so 117 is many but still not enough. But also in the capital city where our head office is, we have six offices, but we still have people who are not registered and on that day people were even passing by because we had loud speakers, we had messages about registration playing, people would come and say what are you doing here? We are Commemorating International ID Day. Why? So we also would explain to them what the day is about and if they have not registered, why they need to register. So awareness is still there. There are people who haven’t, it hasn’t really set in why they need an ID. That’s an ongoing effort with NIRA, which everyone knows why they need to register and to make sure they register. But yes, even access to services, especially country where our officers are far from some people from our offices, it’s both ways.

FRANK HERSEY: Now that is interesting that even in the capital you can have an activity and people are finding out about it for the first time and I suppose the hope is then that the people who you meet out on the square will tell friends and family and bring more people in to register.

FARIDAH NASSOZI: Yes, they know, the people know that NIRA exists, they know NIRA gives IDs, but some of them haven’t appreciated why they need to do so, so that was some of the information we were giving out to them, to give them brochures with information and share hopefully and take the message back home.

FRANK HERSEY: So you had, you know, 600-700 people coming to see you on the day. Do you think you might see a bump in Kampala of more people coming to register in the next, in the next weeks after the word spreads?

EDWIN TUKAMUHEBWA: Yes, definitely. We have actually seen the impact of that activity in all our registration centers in Kampala like we mentioned,
we have five division centers and then the headquarters. We have seen an increase in the workings under the crowds of people who are coming to access our services and something that we are actually considering is that from the response that we got from the people, we are going to continue doing an activity on that very spot. The city square every month. So we’ll select one weekend where we will run the activity from Friday, Saturday and Sunday as a way of consolidating on the achievements that we’ve realized on Identity Day, and then come next year, people should be aware and it will really give us mileage and should to do something that is bigger.

FRANK HERSEY: And just to talk about the birth registration side a little bit as well, obviously that was in a different location in Kampala, not on the square, will you do more activities in health centers to increase awareness of the importance of birth registration as well?

EDWIN TUKAMUHEBWA: Yes, we do. First and foremost, the beginning of birth registration in Uganda at the beginning of the process is birth notification which is conducted by the heritage center staff so they give information to the mothers who come to access their services and even the fathers who come to the facility for any services. However, we have a specific effort on each and every day of immunization, we actually reach out to those health facilities to give information to the mothers who come for, who bring their children for immunization. So that’s how we we actually run it for now.

FRANK HERSEY: I was reading on your website, well, two points here as reading that Rosemary Cazombo said last year that birth registration is running at about 12% something like 159,000 about 1.3 million births per year. And then I saw in your information around ID Day that you said that as an organization NIRA pledges to continue to strive for excellence until we have 100% birth and death and citizen registration. So I was wondering whether this new venture with big activities around ID Day and beyond might really accelerate, you know, might really capture people’s attention and help accelerate that registration rate?

FARIDAH NASSOZI: Yes, these activities definitely towards accelerating registration to achieve that. If you’ve kept the statistics, we currently have 17 million Ugandans who are not registered for national ID and part of our plans next year, part of the efforts to achieve 100% national registration and registration, we are planning a mass movement exercise next year geared towards the 17 million who are not yet registered offering full circle services,
birth, death registration and national ID registration for Ugandans who don’t have the service, who haven’t yet enrolled on the services. So hopefully by next year, by the time we have done with that enrollment, which we want to do early next year, it will be a lot closer to the 100 from where we are right now.

EDWIN TUKAMUHEBWA: If I could supplement on what Faridah is saying, this activity that we did actually fits into the mass registration exercise we’re going to conduct next year. And part of what we were doing was to sensitize the public and give them information and the information was ranging from the services that we provide. But most importantly on the importance of identification or registration, birth and death registration as well. So we hope to capitalize on the information that was sent out because actually after that day there was a lot of conversation and the interaction on social media about what was going on at City Square and (inaudible) center. So we hope to leverage on that that interaction, we are sure a lot of information went out and we are sure that it was helpful in our efforts to realize 100% birth registration and also identification and registration.

FRANK HERSEY: Well it sounds like it was an important part of building that momentum, ID Day was an important part of building the momentum for your much bigger activity next year, so I look forward to hearing more about that activity next year. I’m sure we’ll be reading about it and maybe we could catch up again to see how it goes and see if it has a big impact on all those different rates of registration you’re hoping for. I would just like to say thank you both very much. Was there anything else you would like to add about the situation in Uganda or about ID Day before we finish?

FARIDAH NASSOZI: Personally I would just like to say that it was a success. It was the first time (inaudible) and it was a big success. It sent out a lot of information we hope to but really reaping results from what had that day. We also had a TV interview with our executive director, she was interviewed by different TV stations. So also those interviews played on TV at the end of the day. So a lot of information went out and we’re going to see a lot of results from that. It was a successful day.

EDWIN TUKAMUHEBWA: Our commitment is that we will keep commemorating this day and we will also lobby government to make an official day because it feeds into the development goals. So as a country we are moving towards that and then we will make deliberate efforts to ensure that this day is commemorated every year and also will have quite a number of activities to do on that day to ensure that it is, it makes an impact to the socio economic development of our country.

FRANK HERSEY: Well that all sounds very positive, helping people to register to make sure that they have all the identification documents they need and can then access everything they need to access. Thank you both so much for joining me today to discuss how Uganda handles ID Day and how it will in the future. So Faridah Nassozi, client relations officer for NIRA, and Edwin Tukamuhebwa, manager of registration and operations also at NIRA. Thank you both very much.

Before we turn to civil society, let’s hear one more note from the private sector. This is Yulia Thomas, VP got marketing at Tech5, astute as ever bringing in another dimension to identity: individuals ability to control it.

Yulia Thomas: We at Tech5 support recognition of International Identity Day, because we truly believe that together with members of the ID Day coalition,
we can make a difference by explaining its importance to the community. We are looking forward to witnessing a future in which every individual in the world has a digital identity that he or she fully owns and manages because everyone deserves an identity, identity deserves a day.

FRANK HERSEY: The ability to edit and know about how your ID profile is being used were covered too by the UN’s Niall McCann back in episode two and it’s something we hope to return to in more depth.

Now on to civil society. I spoke to Tom Fisher, senior researcher at Privacy International based in London and which promotes, well, privacy around the world. We were speaking for our next episode on exclusion and use the opportunity to also talk about International Identity Day. Here I asked Tom whether it can be as straightforward as having a day to promote identity.

TOM FISHER: I think it’s really important to have an approach which looks at all sides of the issues surrounding ID. So one of the issues this ID Day that that Privacy International and our network of partners are doing is kind of giving a perspective on some of the some of the dangers of issues that arise, the exclusion which can come from these kinds of systems, from the people who don’t have access to ID or can’t use it because it doesn’t represent say their gender identity they present themselves as. In security you know, many of our partner organizations are scared around what happens around data leaks, use by government police, but also criminal organizations, partner violence, all these kind of issues, and then also surveillance, how it can be used to track you and across so many different aspects of your life, both by government agencies, services police. However, the private sector now has a fantastic entry into what’s happening across your life. So I think it’s really, really important to present what we see as some of these risks and dangers of these kind of systems because it’s not enough just to say that these are amazing and fantastic things are happening surrounding ID around the world. We’ve seen so much which produces new dangers and risks and people affected, excluded, made more insecure, surveilled. Quite a lot of time what we see emerging from organizations like say ID4Africa promoting it is purely that kind of positive view as well as frequently a view of a single model like biometric unique numbered system being the only one that is being kind of promoted, that only one is worthy of being kind of a digital ID system in the modern age. What we’d really like is, we need to first of all remember why ID Day is on the 16th of September, because of 16.9, talk about birth registration, legal identity,
birth registration, these kind of factors. How do we kind of bring it back to that away from biometrics, databases, on the risks associated with that.
How do we debate what kind of solutions there are for the identity issues. How do we use it as an opportunity for this kind of debate as to identify the problems and how do we come up with ways forward involving civil society who’ve been a critiquing so many of these systems? How do we use this as an opportunity for debate rather than purely kind of government led promotion of a particular model which all too often is opposed by aspects of civil society and comes with it huge human rights risks.

FRANK HERSEY: And I suppose it could be as simple as a little bit of a change and to make it International Legal Identity Day. Even ID4Africa itself might argue that that would sound a little bit too complicated and it’s great just to have any thoughts around ID at all. But even looking at the country which seems to have embraced it most wholeheartedly so far would that would be Nigeria, in Nigeria is marked, but it’s actually National ID Day, it’s not International, and I do wonder whether that is in a way to help in their own scheme rolling out their own national ID which is biometric and a little, a lot more complex than just legal identity.

TOM FISHER: I think we’re going to see specific needs in different contexts and to see a day in which we can promote broader, broader inclusion, maybe promotions of birth registration, that kind of things. And I know it’s a PR exercise with the country sometimes a place for that. I think though that when it’s used by central government as a way of promoting their particular policy without that kind of broader engagement, and when they’re doing that backed by ID4Africa as well as the other organizations operating in that space, that is a hugely top down process bringing the entire weight of basically the national government and this international organizations upon the issue. Whereas that’s not going to get to the kind of meaningful solutions to people’s problems,
how they’re affected in their day to day lives by the need for identity or their exclusion or the problems they face when there’s been kind of a data breach,
all these kinds of issues. I think there’s so much there happening in the interest of the powerful, you need to hear more from decreasing number of voices emerging from the society who are concerned about this, who have their have their issues felt, and use the opportunity like the 16th of September to hear from and engage with those voices. That’s good for everyone because that’s how you build legitimacy in what you’re doing. That’s how you build relationships with trust and all these sets of issues rather than just a day in which sell a particular policy idea which is frequently very, very problematic.

FRANK HERSEY: I suppose it’s like so much of the technology itself, is how the day is implemented because there’s the danger of if it’s made into a United Nations international day of identity then that gives it so much more clout and it could be then a way, a sort of authorization for governments to then say look this is there’s a whole United Nations day devoted to this around the world and this is what the system is going to be in our country. It could actually give governments even more power to implement a system.

TOM FISHER: I think they could do well if it does become a UN mandated day, to recommend the centrality of human rights within the UN system and therefore the need for that to be at the center of any debates, any discussions surrounding ID on that day, rather than just an exercise in exercising that power. How do we recognize people’s rights in the context of ID systems, and a day recognizing that, a day appreciating how civil registration can do that, but also a day that begins to critique, people ask why do I need my ID to do x, y, z, that then becomes something that we can all get behind. The benefit of the developmental needs, of the goals of all these organizations, you know, you can’t just keep putting this down upon people in this top down process. You need to appreciate more these challenges that people face.

FRANK HERSEY: Yes, I agree. And it would be interesting if it weren’t actually just limited to legal identity as I suggested because you know, we’re both from the UK and there are plenty of identity issues in the in the UK that I think people generally aren’t aware of and certainly don’t think much about.
So perhaps a day would be good for for that reason if there was, you know, media coverage around identity issues on that day. Maybe everybody should listen to the ID16.9 Podcast on that day.

TOM FISHER: I think that would make, I think that’s a fantastic suggestion. I think on a weekly basis though I think something needs to go on throughout the year, not just limited to one day. Well I think it’s an excellent podcast, many fantastic guests and I’m very pleased to be a part of it.

FRANK HERSEY: Including yourself. Well thank you very much, Tom Fisher from Privacy International.

TOM FISHER: Thank you very much.

FRANK HERSEY: And one final note on ID Day, our graphic designer Alike Opaye from Ghana was the winner of the International ID Day artwork competition in 2021 and that’s how we found him. We love his work for the show and I hope you do too. To find out more about legal identity, the UN goals, and to listen to all our episodes, go to ID169.com and see if you think we’re on track for 2030.