World Privacy Forum Commemorates International ID Day 2024 and reaffirms the importance of ID systems that Do No Harm now, and cannot do harm in the future

Pam Dixon | 16 September 2024, International ID Day 

I’m Pam Dixon, Founder and Executive Director of the World Privacy Forum. I am here to commemorate International Identity Day 2024. [1] Specifically, the World Privacy Forum is commemorating that legal identity is a public good. Legal identity allows people to access the full realm of social life, including that of travel, education, purchasing a home, crossing borders —even for something as simple as a vacation — which requires a passport, which requires legal identity. The World Privacy Forum affirms that legal identity is a public good. 

We also affirm that as we build Identity ecosystems, digital and otherwise, that digital ecosystems, digital identity ecosystems, and all identity ecosystems must be built in a way that causes no harm. And further, that these systems cannot be used to cause harm now or in the future.