While the national digital identity schemes and systems (NIDS) may bring significant benefits and protections in multiple contexts, and allow individuals to obtain and assert important rights, they may also have adverse consequences for the human rights of individuals and communities and groups of individuals. These consequences can range from discrimination and exclusion to marginalisation, to unwarranted profiling and surveillance, to a person’s loss of control over their identity or even the misuse or theft of one’s identity.
Given the potential for adverse impacts on human rights, NIDS should take a human rights centered approach and should explicitly integrate human rights considerations as anchored in international human rights law into the policy, design, implementation, and operation of national digital identity schemes and systems.
These guidelines seek to apply the principles and provisions of Convention 108+ to the development and implementation of NIDS. They promote an objective assessment of all interests at stake including the benefits of such systems against the interference they might represent with human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals, in supporting legitimate policy objectives while minimising risks to individuals, groups, and communities of individuals. These Guidelines also provide recommendations for each type of actors of the development and implementation of such systems.
