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