Keeping the promise of the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development by Achieving Legal Identity for All

Legal identity is essential to the eradication of poverty and is at the forefront of basic needs, as it provides access to the most fundamental rights: education, health, housing, land rights, voting, and social protection systems. Providing a birth certificate or legal identity for every human being affirms the inalienable right of all children to have access to a name, an identity and to civil registration. Target 16.9 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals commits to provide "legal identity for all by 2030." Leaving no one behind starts with birth registration for every child, but it also requires that every person has accesses to legal identity, that reflects their gender identity, and is respective of family history.

This panel format webinar will take a Human Rights approach to aspects of legal identity, with topics including:

• The intersection between poverty and the lack of legal identity.
• Birth registration for every child and young person.
• How lack of legal identity affects homelessness and access to social protection.
• Family identity severed by State sanctioned separation and how advocates are working to reclaim it.
• The importance of legal identity reflecting gender.

The discussion will also highlight actionable strategies on a local, national, and international level.

Guest speakers:

Bhaskar Mishra, CVRS and Birth Registration specialist, UNICEF

Arli Christian (she/them), Senior Policy Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union

Tiegan Boyens, ATD Fourth World UK Activist

Housing specialist (TBC)

Christian Courtis, Gender and Women’s Rights Adviser, OHCHR, New York Office

 View the ConceptNote.