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registration
This page considers personal registration regimes
in advanced and emerging economies.
It covers -
It
supplements a more detailed discussion
of Australian official registration mechanisms (eg birth
registers, electoral rolls and other formal lists that
situate individuals within a web of identity).
introduction
Recognition of an individual's identity by the state -
and by private sectyor entities that piggyback the state's
recognition through for example acceptance of driver licence
documentation - is a prerequisite for personal 'flourishing'
in all advanced economies.
Many activities are inconvenient, even impossible, when
an individual is not recognised. Rights may not be accepted
where the state denies recognition of the individual,
for example disclaims responsibility for diplomatic representation
or for provision of income support on the basis that the
individual is not a citizen.
That recognition is often embodied in a cascade of registration,
with individuals being officially recognised from when
they are born (eg in a register of births) to when they
die (a register of deaths), interspersed with registration
as a taxpayer, an owner of real estate, an authorised
driver of a motor vehicle, a voter and so forth.
Recognition is a cascade because one incident of recognition
typically forms the foundation for another, for example
a birth certificate is usually required for acquisition
of a driver's licence. Subversion of registration requirements
- such as fraudulently obtaining or forging a licence
- attracts substantial penalties.
Individuals in advanced economies appear to assume that
registration 'just happens': registration is something
that is so unremarkable that it is invisible except where
there is a tear in the fabric of identity.
The notion that registration is the basis for full participation
in civil society poses challenges for emerging economies.
A preceding page of this guide for example highlighted
reiderstvo
in Russia, where confiscation by corrupt officials of
an individual's identity papers denies that person a range
of fundamental entitlements. Ethnic cleansing in the Balkans,
Central Africa and other locations has often featured
destruction of land titles registers, marriage rolls,
birth registers and other databases that allow people
to determine who they are and prove claims about property,
education and so forth.
Inadequate
registration may have an equally serious impact, with
many children in emerging economies for example not being
registered and thus not having an official existence.
Two perspectives are provided in 'Birth Registration:
An Essential First Step toward Ensuring the Rights of
All Children' by Jonathan Todres in 10(3) Human Rights
Brief (2003) 32-35, 'Uncovering Children in Marginalization:
Explaining Unregistered Children in China' by Yingying
Zhou (2005) (PDF)
and 'UNICEF on Deficient Birth Registration in Developing
Countries' in 24(3) UNICEF Population and Development
Review (1998) 659-664. For the PRC see 'China's One-Child
Policy: Illegal Children and the Family Planning Law'
by Nicole Skalla in 30(1) Brooklyn Journal of International
Law (2004) 330-363 (PDF),
Birth Control in China, 1949-2000: Population Policy
and Demographic Development (London: Routledge 2003)
by Thomas Scharping and Governing China's Population:
From Leninist to Neoliberal Biopolitics (Stanford:
Stanford Uni Press 2005) by Susan Greenhalgh & Edwin
Winckler
next page (identity
and character)
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