Haki Legal Empowerment White Paper 3: Promoting Development Through Legal Identity

The Haki Network has produced a series of White Papers on under-examined issues in law and development.

Possession of legal identity is a fundamental threshold for gaining access to a range of goods and services that have the potential to improve people’s lives, promote development, and help countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Despite the unequivocal provision in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, tens of millions of people lack a formally documented legal identity.

The third White Paper analyzes the importance of legal identity, the barriers to achieving it, and finally recommends several reforms for donor-funded projects in order to increase access to legal identity.