Target 16.9: Legal identity for all
By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Legal identity and birth registration are civil-registry functions of governments. The World Bank ID4D initiative estimates about 850 million people lack official ID and 3.3 billion lack digital ID for online transactions. Mobile operators do act as a registration channel. Tanzania's simplified birth registration system, delivered through a partnership between Global Affairs Canada, UNICEF and Tigo Telecom, had registered over 9 million children under five by December 2023. The GSMA reports that over 155 governments tie SIM registration to proof of identity. No shareholder resolution or corporate lobbying record on legal identity is documented. The binding constraints, meaning registry coverage, legal frameworks, fees and remote populations, are public. Mobile operators are a documented delivery channel for birth registration and lobbying is immaterial, so owners of telecom shares help only at the margin.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
No shareholder advocacy found yet
We looked and found nothing that met our standard, which is a source we opened and confirmed. Birth registration and legal identity are civil-registry functions. ICCR's resolution and news search returns zero results for birth registration. No shareholder proposal, investor letter, coalition engagement or proxy voting policy on legal identity or SIM-linked registration met the sourcing standard. The Tanzania mobile registration partnership involves Global Affairs Canada, UNICEF and Tigo, which is development programming rather than ownership advocacy.
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.