OREANDA-NEWS. Identity 2020 Systems (ID2020) have announced PwC, the global professional services network, as the lead sponsor of the landmark ID2020 Summit to create technology-driven public-private partnerships to achieve the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goal of providing legal identity for everyone on the planet.

ID2020’s mission is to harness innovation and enable emerging technology to address the challenge of creating legal identities for vulnerable populations, including the victims of human trafficking, modern-day slavery and refugee crises.

This platform is directly aligned with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by world leaders at the United Nations on 25 September 2015.   Specifically, ID2020’s mission aligns with development target 16.9, “Legal identity for all, including birth registration”. Thirty percent of the world’s population, approximately 1.5 billion people, lack a legal identity, leaving them vulnerable to legal, political, social and economic exclusion.

Launching on Friday May 20th , the inaugural ID2020 Summit is being convened by ID2020, a not-for-profit corporation,  in collaboration with the International Telecommunications Union - the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies, and the United Nations Office for Partnerships. It will bring together innovators, policy makers, humanitarian agencies and others to develop practical approaches to integrating emerging technologies into the world’s identity programs.

The ID2020 Summit will examine the issues, approaches and challenges regarding legal identity systems, outlining an initial action plan towards specific achievable goals. Progress on the goals will be reviewed at each annual summit.

Government and non-government organizations can more easily help the world’s disadvantaged populations become safe, part of society, financially included and economically active if such at-risk peoples have legal identities. The ID2020 Summit will work toward facilitating this.

Patrick Spens, PwC UK, and ID2020 leadership member comments:

“The purpose of ID2020 is simple and smart. Technology can’t address the Sustainable Development Goals without policy makers, industry humanitarian agencies and citizens talking about it. ID2020 is providing the platform, and eliminating global boundaries, to open one of the most important debates of the 21st Century and come up with solutions.”

John Edge, Chairman, ID2020 comments:

“One of the UN’s goals is to ‘strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development’. This goal is about how we harness public-private partnerships to create sustainable models. PwC has led the way in private sector commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals, and we believe the issue of legal identity is a linchpin to progress. I have been impressed by the speed and efficiency in which PwC has moved to support the ‘startup NGO’ that we are as Identity2020, recognizing that one has to start somewhere to have positive system-wide impact.”