Blockchain: Digital Identities for Everyone?

Andreas Proksch, Marit Hansen, Andrew Tobin, Franz von Weizsäcker Whether you open a bank account, obtain health services, register your car, file a complaint, apply for a job or travel for holidays -- in the rich world, identification credentials are part of our daily lives enabling us to be an active member of society and the economy.  In developing and emerging economies, or for refugees, identification credentials often play a vital role for social and economic empowerment on one side, but at the same time they can expose individuals to risks for their safety and security, be it identifying them as war deserters, or as members of a minority, or being excluded for their sexual orientation or medical background.  Andreas Proksch, Director-General of GIZ's new Sector and Global Programmes Department, will open the session by outlining the importance of identity management in the context of international development cooperation. The potentials for informational self-determination and potential pitfalls will be discussed by Marit Hansen, the Head of the Independent Centre for Data Protection (ULD) and the Data Protection Commissioner of Schleswig-Holstein. Andrew Tobin, founder of Evernym, will finally talk about the potential of self-sovereign identities, privacy enhancing technologies as well as the non-profit open source platform sovrin.org. While this session provides an entry point to the discussion, we invite participants to join a workshop to develop ideas around applications of self-sovereign identity in development cooperation with GIZ and other experts. supported by BMZ