The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 (SDG16)
Unlimited Hangout Investigative Series
Source: Unlimited Hangout
SDG16: Part 1 — Building the Global Police State
The United Nations claims that the purpose of Sustainable Development Goal 16 (SDG16) is to promote peaceful and inclusive societies and to provide access to justice for all. Hiding behind the rhetoric is the real objective: to strengthen and consolidate the power and authority of the “global governance regime” and to exploit threats—both real and imagined—in order to advance regime hegemony.
By Iain Davis and Whitney Webb
June 5, 2023
During our investigation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the disingenuous use of language to sell SDGs to an unsuspecting public has emerged as a common theme.
The United Nations (UN) claims the purpose of SDG16 is to:
Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
If we accept the supposition that “sustainable development” is global development that meets the needs of the world’s poor, then a reasonable person is unlikely to disagree with this stated objective.
But helping the poor is not the purpose of SDG16.
The real purpose of SDG16 is threefold: (1) empower a global governance regime, (2) exploit threats, both real and imagined, to advance regime objectives; and (3) force an unwarranted, unwelcome, centrally controlled global system of digital identity (digital ID) upon humanity.
We find the UN’s digital ID objective tucked away in its SDG Target 16.9:
By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.
While SDG16 doesn’t allude specifically to “digital” ID, that is what it means.
As we shall see, the SDG16 target indicators don’t reveal the truth, either. For example, the only “indicator” to measure SDG16.9 progress (16.9.1) is:
[The] proportion of children under 5 years of age whose births have been registered with a civil authority, by age.
You might therefore think the task of “providing legal identity” would primarily fall to said “civil authorities.” That is not the case.
Within the UN system, all governments (whether local, county, provincial, state, federal) are “stakeholder partners” in a global network comprised of a wide-ranging gamut of public and private organisations. Many of these are explicitly backed by or housed at the UN, and all of them are pushing digital ID as the key mechanism to achieve SDG16.
This aspect of SDG16 will be more fully explored in Part 2.
There is a term that this worldwide amalgam of organisations often uses to describe itself: it is a global public-private partnership—G3P, for short.
The G3P is toiling tirelessly to create the conditions necessary to justify the imposition of both global governance “with teeth” and its prerequisite digital ID system. In doing so, the G3P is inverting the nature of our rights. It manufactures and exploits crises in order to claim legitimacy for its offered “solutions.”
The G3P comprises virtually all of the world’s intergovernmental organisations, governments, global corporations, major philanthropic foundations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society groups. Collectively, these form the “stakeholders” implementing sustainable development, including SDG16.
Digital ID will determine our access to public services, to our Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) wallets, to our “vaccine” certificates—to everything, even the food and beverages we’re allowed to buy and consume.
Wary citizens are watchful for potential abuse of digital ID by their authorities. In countries where a national digital ID card is not welcome, such as in the UK, the G3P solution is to construct an “interoperable” system that links various digital ID systems together. This “modular platform” approach is designed to avoid the political problems that the official issuance of a national digital ID card would otherwise elicit.
Establishing SDG16.9 global digital ID is crucial for eight of the seventeen UN SDGs. It is the linchpin at the centre of a global digital panopticon that is being devised under the auspices of the UN’s global public-private partnership “regime.”
Human Rights versus Inalienable Rights
For reasons that will become apparent, it is important that we fully understand the UN’s concept of “human rights.”
Human rights are mentioned nine times in the United Nations Charter.
A key document referenced by the UN Charter is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was first accepted by all members of the United Nations on December 10, 1948.
The preamble of the Declaration recognises that the “equal and inalienable rights” of all human beings are the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” After that, “inalienable rights” are never again mentioned in the entire Declaration.
“Human rights” are nothing like “inalienable rights.”
Inalienable rights, unlike human rights, are not bestowed upon us by any governing authority. Rather, they are innate to each of us. They are immutable. They are ours in equal measure. The only source of inalienable rights is Natural Law, or God’s Law.
No one—no government, no intergovernmental organisation, no human institution or human ruler—can ever legitimately claim the right to grant or deny our inalienable rights. Humanity can claim no collectiveauthority to grant or deny the inalienable rights of any individual human being.
Beyond the preamble, the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) concerns itself exclusively with “human rights.” But asserting, as it does, that human rights are some sort of expression of inalienable rights is a fabrication—a lie.
Human rights, according to the UDHR, are created by certain human beings and are bestowed by those human beings upon other human beings. They are not inalienable rights or anything close to inalienable rights.
Article 6 of the UDHR and Article 16 of the UN’s 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (where, again, inalienable rights are mentioned just once in the preamble), both decree:
Everyone has the [human] right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Note: We put “[human]” in brackets in the above quote (and in other UN quotes below) to alert readers that these documents are not referring to inalienable rights.
While the respective Articles 6 and 16 sound appealing, the underlying implications are not. Both articles mean that “without legal existence those rights may not be asserted by a person within the domestic legal order.”
As we shall see, the ability to prove one’s identity will become a prerequisite for “legal existence.” Thus, in a post-SDG16 world, persons without UN-approved identification will be unable to assert their “human rights.”
Under the UN’s system of “human rights,” human beings are not considered to have any inalienable rights. For, as the UN would have it, our alleged “human rights” can be observed only if we comply with the current “legal order.” That “order” is conditional. And it is subject to constant change.
Article 29.2 of the UDHR states:
In the exercise of his [human] rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the [human] rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
Article 29.3 of the UDHR states:
These [human] rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
In plain English: We are only allowed to exercise our alleged human “rights” subject to the diktats of governments, intergovernmental organisations and other UN “stakeholders.”
The bottom line, then, is that what the UN calls “human rights” are not “rights” of any kind at all. They are government and intergovernmental permits by which our behaviour is controlled. Thus, by the UN’s definition, “human rights” are the antithesis of “inalienable rights.”
But remember, we have been informed—in the preamble of that same Declaration—that “inalienable rights” are the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Please bear this point in mind as we continue to unravel the UN’s SDG16 plot against humanity.
Human Rights as Policy Tools
It is common practice among the UN and its partners, such as the World Economic Forum (WEF), to view crises as opportunities. The WEF admitted, for instance, that the COVID-19 “pandemic” was “a unique window of opportunity.”
The UN said the same thing. After one of its “specialist agencies,” the World Health Organisation (WHO), declared a global pandemic on 11 March 2020, the UN published COVID-19 and Human Rights, in which it said:
How we respond today, therefore, presents a unique opportunity to course-correct and begin to tackle long-standing public policies and practices that have been harmful for people and their human rights.
That both the UN and the WEF perceived COVID-19 as a unique opportunity to “reset” or “course-correct” should surprise no one. The WEF is a strategic partner of the UN, and both are equally committed to “accelerat[ing] the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”
It is within this frame of reference that the UN’s perception of what it calls “human rights” takes on a peculiar dimension:
The United Nations has available a powerful set of tools, in the form of human rights, that equip States and whole societies to respond to threats and crises in a way that puts people at the centre.
Here, the UN and its partners are assuming the authority to define “human rights” and to treat them as mere policy tools. Note how it says that “States” (capital “S”) can use these tools to put people at the centre of a crisis or threat response. The UN is insinuating that, if respected, “human rights” should shape a humanitarian policy response to a threat or crisis.
However, the UN contradicts itself in the same document. Later on, it suggests that a policy response to a crisis or threat can justify discounting human rights:
Human rights law recognizes that national emergencies may require limits to be placed on the exercise of certain human rights. The scale and severity of COVID-19 reaches a level where restrictions are justified on public health grounds.
This statement about restrictions to human rights is far-and-away removed from the concept of inalienable, or “natural,” rights, which are inviolable and immutable. Thus, by placing “human rights” at the centre of a policy response to a threat or a crisis, the UN and its partners are exploiting the unique opportunity to not only redefine “human rights” but to ignore those supposed rights whenever they deem it necessary.
It gets worse. Instead of respecting our actual rights and defining them accurately, the UN proceeds to outline how these new “policy tool rights” can be used by legislators. It adds components to its alleged “human rights” structure that otherwise have nothing to do with rights:
People are being asked to comply with extraordinary measures, many severely restricting their human rights. [. . .] Securing compliance depends on building trust, and trust depends on transparency and participation.
Translation: We are going to take away your human rights. We know you will readily comply as long as we justify our restrictions on public health grounds and persuade you that this is our sole goal. Just trust us.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines the verb “to trust” as “to hope and expect that something is true.” When you take something on trust, it says, you “believe that something is true although you have no proof.” It also says that “to trust” is “to believe that someone is good and honest and will not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable. . . .”
In its COVID-19 and Human Rights document, the UN declares that our compliance can be secured through our unquestioning acceptance of whatever we are told by the “authorities.”
Consequently, anything that erodes “trust” in the UN—in its ideas, policy agendas, agencies and “stakeholder partners”—the document calls “disinformation” or “misinformation.”
According to that document, the UN welcomes censorship of speech:
The crisis raises the question how best to counter harmful speech while protecting freedom of expression. Sweeping efforts to eliminate misinformation or disinformation can result in purposeful or unintentional censorship, which undermines trust. [. . .] While flags and takedowns of misinformation are welcome, giving greater prominence to reliable information needs to be the first line of defence.
The dichotomy the UN faces is clear. On the one hand, the organisation is keen for its government partners to flag and take down supposedly wrong information by applying new derivative labels like “harmful” and to decree by fiat what constitutes “disinformation”—all of this evidence of its desire to promote censorship to curtail free speech. On the other hand, it is paradoxically claiming that it values “freedom of expression.” This hypocritical nonsense is a bald-faced attempt to avoid eroding the public “trust” it desperately seeks.
But criticism of the UN, which of course the UN labels “disinformation,” is often justified. For example, in COVID-19 and Human Rights the UN wrote:
COVID-19 is showing that universal health coverage (UHC) must become an imperative. [. . .] UHC promotes strong and resilient health systems, reaching those who are vulnerable and promoting pandemic preparedness and prevention. SDG 3 includes a target of achieving UHC.
As previously discussed at Unlimited Hangout, what the UN is saying here is patently false. The UN’s SDG3 pursuit of Universal Health Coverage during COVID-19 destroyed relatively strong and resilient health systems. It propelled many developing and emerging economies into ever-greater debt. It degraded health outcomes. There was no “imperative” to establish UHC in order to tackle COVID-19. Doing so delivered results that were contrary to the UN’s claimed objective: the “sustainable development” of healthcare in the Global South.
However, as we have noted elsewhere, shackling emerging economies with debt is seen by the UN as a means of securing those countries’ compliance with the policy goals tucked inside its Agenda 2030 SDGs. Some of those goals seek to financialize the natural resources of targeted nations while eroding their national sovereignty.
UHC2030: The United Nations’ Global Public-Private Partnership For Healthcare
In our continuing series exploring sustainable development and the associated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we turn our attention to SDG 3 which promises to “ensure healthy lives.” Once again, when we scrutinise this promise it is empty. Through the 2030 Agenda for Universal Health Coverage (UHC2030) it seems that debt-based neocolonialism and oppressive global governance by a global public-private partnership are the real goals.
We also know that the WHO, as a key stakeholder of the UN’s SDG3 (aka UHC) policy agenda, is currently leading the development of the proposed Pandemic Preparedness Treaty. (Its full name is the International Treaty on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response. Its short name is the Pandemic Accord.) Numerous investigators and commentators have already shown that this treaty portends the erosion of national sovereignty and the loss of both our so-called “human” and our alleged political rights.
Furthermore, the UN is itself often the purveyor of disinformation. For example, its current Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, made the following Tweet:
Human rights are the foundation of human dignity. As we mark 75 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and help to promote a world of dignity, freedom and justice.
This is a blatantly false assertion. The Declaration clearly states that “inalienable rights”—not “human rights”—are the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Thus, the Secretary-General of the United Nations was spreading disinformation. He was deceiving the public about the implications of one of the UN’s own seminal documents.
The WHO is also amending the International Health Regulations (IHR). The process of amending the IHR “runs in parallel” with the WHO’s work on the aforementioned Pandemic Accord. Both the IHR and the Pandemic Accord will be binding on all 193 UN signatory member states.
The current proposed amendments to the IHR illustrate how “crises” provide unique opportunities for the UN and its partners to control populations—through purported “human rights”—by exploiting those “rights” as “a powerful set of tools.”
Here is one example of the proposals being put forth: The WHO wishes to remove the following language from IHR Article 3.1:
The implementation of these Regulations shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons.
It intends to replace that regulatory principle with:
The implementation of these Regulations shall be based on the principles of equity, inclusivity, coherence and in accordance with the common but differentiated responsibilities of their States Parties, taking into consideration their social and economic development.
This proposed amendment signifies that the UN and its partners wish to completely ignore the UN’s own Universal Declaration of Human Rights whenever any of these agencies declares a new “crisis” or identifies a new “international threat.” This exemplifies the “course-correction” the UN envisioned would arise from the “unique opportunity” presented by the COVID-19 crisis.
Make no mistake, the UN wants us to accept that the eradication of our ostensible human rights is a way of protecting those same human rights whenever we face potential “harm.”
Ironically, this effort to completely discard the UDHR is entirely consistent with Article 29.2 and Article 29.3 of that very document. This illustrates the complete farce that the UN’s “human rights” actually are.
As we shall discuss in Part 2, there is no end to the list of crises the UN and the overarching G3P might choose to pronounce. Unique opportunities to control our behaviour through a system of “human rights” permits abound.
Access to Information?
The censorship of claimed “misinformation” and “disinformation” is a key part of SDG16. For example, SDG16.10 claims to guarantee “public access to information” and to “protect fundamental freedoms.” Yet, perversely, this same SDG is being used by the UN and other groups to justify online censorship under the guise of addressing “information issues.” The “issue” is any information that challenges or discredits the institutions that the UN’s remaining SDG16 targets aim to strengthen.
For instance, this kind of censorship has been promoted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an influential, US-based think tank whose board is chaired by Thomas Pritzker, head honcho of Hyatt Hotels. Pritzker also happens to be named as a central figure in Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal sex trafficking operations; Epstein himself nicknamed Pritzker “Numero Uno.” The President and CEO of the CSIS is John J. Hamre, a former US Deputy Secretary of Defense.
In 2021, the CSIS published an article titled “It’s Time for the United States to Reengage with the SDGs, Starting with SDG16.”
Of SDG16.10 in particular the article says:
A second example of practical alignment would be efforts to bring transparency to instances of misinformation and disinformation, especially around elections and governance. Covid-19 has increased the proliferation of disinformation, misinformation, and censorship in the name of national security and the discrediting of state institutions. SDG16 target 16.10 calls for “ensuring public access to information and protecting fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements.” This means SDG16 is uniquely poised to address information issues in relation to both rising authoritarianism led by states and weakening democracy led by malign actors.
In other words, per CSIS, SDG16.10 calls for ensuring public access notto all information but only to approved information that does not “discredit” certain institutions or “weaken” democracy. As we shall see, the UN agrees.
The UN “custodian agency” for SDG16.10—specifically for its “access to information” component—is UNESCO. Sure enough, when we read the 2021 UNESCO report about SDG16.10, we see that “public access to information” means “the presence of an effective system to meet citizens’ rights to seek and receive information, particularly that held by or on behalf of public authorities.”
Other UN documents similarly reveal that the “information” referred to here is information produced by public institutions. Thus, per the UN, “public access to information” refers to a system wherein information produced by governance institutions at the local, national and international levels can be sought and received by the public. It does not guarantee, nor is it meant to guarantee, the free flow of information. Instead, it is meant to ensure a free flow of the information that governments willingly produce for public consumption.
The information that is guaranteed to be publicly accessible by SDG16.10 is the very information that, according to UNESCO and other UN bodies, is meant to foster “trust” in the governance institutions that are to be “strengthened” by other SDG16 targets. This information is also meant to be the “foundation” of building the public perception that these institutions are “transparent” and “accountable.”
The types of information to which SDG16.10 guarantees public access, says UNESCO, include “the way [citizen] data is handled” by governments, federal “budget disclosures” and “health and COVID-19 related information.”
There are many examples of “public authorities” providing “information” that is neither accurate nor verifiable. Indeed, many governments that freely publish such information provide flawed data that is not meant to inform the public but rather to protect “trust” in institutions by obscuring government malfeasance and/or incompetence.
For instance, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied under oath to Congress about how citizens’ data was being utilized by the national security community. But he got away with committing perjury.
Similarly, much of the COVID-19 data “freely” published by governments—the US, the UK and Australia among them—was intentionally manipulated to justify ineffective or counterproductive policies like lockdowns and the global vaccination programme. But those governments, like Clapper, got away with it. There is nothing in SDG16.10 or its target indicators that addresses dishonesty from the institutions that SDG16 seeks to strengthen.
As previously noted, the public’s “trust” in the SDGs is crucial to the UN’s global governance regime (a “regime” we will define shortly). Were the information produced by SDG-implementing institutions (i.e., national governments, the UN, and other UN stakeholder partners) to be outed as faulty and dishonest, the fallout would reduce “trust” in these same institutions. Such a dip, the UN fears, could potentially result in a reduction of citizen “compliance” with UN-approved, SDG-related mandates and edicts.
Thus, with regard to SDG16.10—or any part of any SDG, for that matter—we may conclude that, instead of ensuring that the information to which it guarantees access is accurate, the UN and its stakeholder partners aim to create a regime whereby those who might be able to show that state-produced information is inaccurate are silenced for the sin of reducing “trust” and “weakening democracy.” The silencing enables the UN to claim these people threaten “fundamental freedoms” and “human rights.”
One UN SDG-focused blog noted that “misleading or false information undermines social trust and jeopardises access to reliable information.”
This particular post was referring to COVID-19 vaccinations. It characterized “misleading or false information” as doubts about the vaccines’ safety and efficacy, despite the fact that the data clearly show—then and now—that the vaccines were neither effective nor safe.
The UN’s idea of “reliable information” is UN-approved information that reinforces the preferred narratives of the UN and its strategic “stakeholder partners,” from the WEF to aligned national governments.
Another example that highlights the UN’s views on “reliable information” is the UN’s “Verified” campaign. When it was launched in 2020, UN Secretary-General Guterres had this to say about “misinformation”:
Misinformation spreads online, in messaging apps and person to person. Its creators use savvy production and distribution methods. To counter it, scientists and institutions like the United Nations need to reach people with accurate information they can trust.
Per the UN, the “Verified“ campaign saw the UN Department of Global Communications “partner with United Nations agencies and country teams, influencers, civil society, business and media organizations to distribute trusted, accurate content and work with social media platforms to root out hate and harmful assertions about COVID-19.”
Yet, despite the UN’s claim that the information it was distributing was “accurate,” it was provably inaccurate.
For instance, the Verified website insists that COVID-19 vaccines “are saving lives”—a statement solely based on UK government data on COVID deaths before and after the country’s vaccine rollout. It fails to note that UK government data on COVID deaths was intentionally misleading.
In addition, the Verified site continues to claim that the COVID-19 vaccine stops disease transmission, which it does not.
Also, Verified falsely characterizes mass vaccination as the only way to “end the pandemic.” Again, verifiably false.
These falsehoods are set within the UN’s claim that it “owns the science.” Speaking at the WEF’s anti-disinformation panel, UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications Melissa Fleming outlined how the UN had partnered with Google and TikTok to rig their respective search results.
We own the science, and we think that the world should know it.
Nothing could be more “anti-scientific” than this statement. Yet the UN continually accuses others of spreading “anti-scientific” disinformation.
The UN insists that, under SDG16.10, the public should be guaranteed access only to the “reliable,” “accurate” information that only it and its stakeholder partners provide. Yet this world body routinely provides inaccurate information when claiming to be doing the opposite.
The UN promotes the need to counter misinformation and disinformation, which it defines, respectively, as the “accidental spread of inaccurate information” and the “intentional spread of inaccurate information.” But, as shown above, this world body is not interested in providing “accurate” information or pointing out “inaccurate” information. Instead, in the context of SDG16.10, it seeks to become a global arbiter of “truth.”
The UN Human Rights Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, has pushed for increased social media regulation and for the UN and its allies to work directly with Big Tech. All of the world’s “Big Tech” corporations, like the UN itself, are G3P members.
Also, Bachelet uses language that “disses” any information contrary to the UN narrative. She has framed dis- and misinformation as symptoms of “global diseases” that undermine “public trust.”
Yet, stunningly, in the same breath, she (along with other UN officials) asserts that censorship efforts to counter disinformation should not infringe on the freedom of expression and other important “human rights.”
In a preposterous attempt to get around this irreconcilable dichotomy, Bachelet and her UN cronies return to the second part of SDG16.10: “protect fundamental freedoms.” They characterize disinformation and misinformation as being whatever negatively impacts “fundamental freedoms” and “human rights.” Such “harmful” content, they insist, needs to be actively stifled.
Here is one specific example: The UN Secretary-General’s report on countering dis- and misinformation, published last year, was explicitly titled “Countering disinformation for the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” It asserted that “countering disinformation” must somehow “promote” and “protect” both “fundamental freedoms” and “human rights.”
In another example, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution which inveighed against “the increasing and far-reaching negative impact on the enjoyment and realization of human rights of the deliberate creation and dissemination of false or manipulated information intended to deceive and mislead audiences, either to cause harm or for personal, political or financial gain.”
This resolution was sponsored by the US and the UK governments, both of which are notorious for spreading propaganda and for pushing for excessive censorship of independent media. The resolution explicitly frames “false information” as information that negatively impacts the “enjoyment and realization of human rights.”
Clearly, the “enjoyment” of “human rights” does not extend to enjoying the alleged human rights of free speech or freedom of expression. Both of these are inalienable rights which cannot be removed or infringed by anyone or any institutions. But, as “human rights,” they can easily be swept aside or redefined.
A third example is the UN’s promotion of what it calls the “ABC” approach to countering inaccurate information. ABC stands for “actors,” “behaviour” and “content,” as this UN document on combating disinformation explains:
Experts have pointed to the need to address the “actors” (those responsible for the content) and the “behaviour” (the manner in which information is disseminated), rather than the “content” as such, in order to effectively counter information operations while protecting free expression.
Thus, the UN intends to target the individuals who produce the alleged “disinformation” or “misinformation” and stop them from disseminating it.
As we shall see, Interpol has been chosen by the UN to implement much of SDG16. Interpol is intimately involved with the UN’s strategic partner, the WEF, in a plan to label those who produce misinformation and disinformation as “cybercriminals.”
Strengthening the Regime
In its 2013 exploration of the Post-2015 Development Agenda (Agenda 2030), the UN said:
Partnership can promote a more effective, coherent, representative and accountable global governance regime, which should ultimately translate into better national and regional governance [and] the realization of human rights and sustainable development[.] [. . .] In a more interdependent world, a more coherent, transparent and representative global governance regime will be critical to achieve sustainable development in all its dimensions. [. . .] A global governance regime, under the auspices of the UN, will have to ensure that the global commons will be preserved for future generations.
The UN calls itself a “global governance regime.” It is arbitrarily assuming the authority to seize control of everything (“the global commons”), including humans, both by enforcing its Charter—citing its misnamed “Human Rights” declaration—and by fulfilling its “Sustainable Development” agenda.
Note that the “global governance regime” will ultimately “translate into better national and regional governance.” This means that the role of each national government is merely to “translate” global governance into national policy. Electing one political party or another to undertake the translation makes no material difference. The policy is not set by the governments we elect.
As nation-states one by one implement SDG-based policies, the regime further consolidates its global governance. And since the “global governance regime will be critical to achieve sustainable development,” the two mechanisms—global governance and sustainable development—are symbiotic.
Again, by the UN’s own admission, inalienable rights are the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Yet the UN’s entire Charter-based human rights framework comprehensively rejects the principle of inalienable and immutable rights.
The UN Charter is, therefore, an international treaty that establishes a global governance regime which stands firmly against “freedom, justice and peace in the world.” All of the UN’s “sustainable development” projects should be understood in this context.
Unsurprising for a “global governance regime,” the UN has created several targets of SDG16 that deal with creating “strong institutions,” mainly at the level of global governance. For example, SDG16.8 calls for the broadening and strengthening of “the participation of developing countries in the institutions of global governance.”
The SDG16.8 targets are vague. Progress toward them will supposedly be measured by monitoring the “proportion of members and voting rights of developing countries in international organizations.” This is hardly a commitment to afford those developing nations any greater say in decision-making, however.
The definition of “the institutions of global governance” is equally ambiguous. For Harvard scholars, it means a set of global organisations, such the International Criminal Court (ICC), the World Trade Organization (WTO), regional human rights courts, and the United Nations, etc. For students of “global governance” at Bremen University, the “institutions” fit within a decentralised network of different “actors” that provide regulations based upon international norms and rules.
What all these globe-wide organisations have in common is that they exercise supranational authority to some degree.
The WTO influences, coordinates and often sets national governments’ trade policies.
The ICC supposedly has “global” jurisdiction to try the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and, since 2018, the crime of “international aggression.”
The UN considers itself chief among all supranational organisations. Member nation-states agree to cede their sovereignty to the fifteen-member Security Council and, in particular, to the five permanent members of that Council.
Under its aforementioned Charter, the UN places nearly all executive power in the hands of those five permanent members: the US, the UK, France, Russia and China. Regardless of SDG16.8, the UN is not proposing to amend its own Charter and has shown little interest in living up to the promise of its own SDG targets and indicators.
On the contrary, as we head toward the new multipolar world order, the UN’s permanent Security Council partners—most notably the Russian and Chinese governments—are calling for a “world order” based upon the “purposes and principles” of the UN Charter. In other words, they are avid promoters of a firmer “global governance regime.”
UN General Assembly (GA) delegates, meanwhile, have been requesting reform of the UN Security Council for decades. Namely, they want the Security Council to more broadly represent the nation-states by having more than fifteen members.
The official Russian government position agrees with the GA delegates. Russia seeks to promote “inclusion” by admitting to the Security Council more nations from Africa, South America and Asia.
The Russian Permanent Mission to the UN explained its stance this way:
A just and democratic world order cannot be achieved without a strict observance of the principles of the supremacy of international law, mainly of the UN Charter and the prerogatives of the UN Security Council. [. . .] All the decisions taken and mandates given by the UN Security Council are binding on all Member States. [. . .] The purpose of the reform of the UN Security Council is to achieve broader representation without damaging the effectiveness and efficiency of its work.
Upon closer scrutiny, though, we observe that “broader representation” that does not undermine the “effectiveness” of the Security Council is impossible. Any change intended to empower “developing countries in the institutions of global governance” is instead likely to maintain and consolidate Security Council dominance. The UN Charter is unambiguous on this point.
Under the Charter, the GA is supposedly a decision-making forum of “equal” member states. The Charter then outlines all the reasons why it isn’t.
Article 11 decrees that the GA’s powers are limited to discussing “the general principles of co-operation.” Its decision-making ability is extremely limited.
Article 12 decrees that the GA can deliberate upon any dispute between member states only if the Security Council allows it.
Article 24 ensures, in any practical sense, that the Security Council has sole responsibility for “the maintenance of international peace and security.”
Article 25 compels all other GA member states to follow the orders issued by the Security Council.
Article 27 decrees that at least nine of the fifteen Security Council member states must be in agreement for a Security Council resolution to be enforced. Five of those nine in concurrence must be the permanent members. Each of the five has the power of veto. Thus, simply adding more members to the Security Council won’t change the supremacy of the permanent members in any meaningful sense.
Articles 29 and 30 establish the Security Council as an autonomous decision-making body within the UN power structure. It goes without saying that the GA is allowed to “elect” only the non-permanent members of the Security Council following the recommendations of the Security Council.
Articles 39 through 50 (Chapter VII of the Charter) further empower the Security Council. The Council is charged with investigating and defining all alleged security threats and with recommending procedures and adjustments for the supposed remedy to those threats. The Security Council dictates what further action, such as sanctions or the use of military force, shall be taken against any nation-state it considers to be a problem.
Article 44 notes that, “when the Security Council has decided to use force,” the only consultative obligation it has to the wider GA is to discuss the use of another member state’s armed forces once the Security Council has ordered that nation to fight. For a country that is a GA-“elected” member of the Security Council, practically unlimited use of its armed forces by the Security Council’s Military Staff Committee is a prerequisite for Council membership.
The UN Secretary-General, identified as the “chief administrative officer” in the Charter, oversees the UN Secretariat. The Secretariat runs the UN. It commissions, investigates and produces the reports that allegedly inform UN decision-making.
The Secretariat staff members are appointed by the Secretary-General. Article 97 of the UN Charter determines that the Secretary-General is “appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.”
Under the UN Charter, the Security Council is made king. This arrangement affords the governments of its permanent members—again, China, France, Russia, the UK and the US—considerable additional authority. There is nothing egalitarian about the UN Charter. The UN Charter is the embodiment and essence of centralised global power and authority.
In the highly charged political arena created by the UN Charter, the geopolitical power struggle often seems futile. Here, in no special order, are a few illustrations of that futility—evidence of the permanent members’ clout.
Speaking in January 2023, Russian Federation Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the Russian Federation strongly supports expanding the composition of the Security Council. He made no mention of curtailing the permanent members’ additional powers.
Last fall, when ten members of the Security Council attempted to pass a resolution describing the referendums in the former Ukrainian oblasts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya as “a threat to international peace and security,” the Russian Federation, as a permanent member of the Security Council, vetoed the resolution. The Russian government is among the permanent members apparently eager to retain its power.
When the Russian government discovered a network of US-funded biological research labs in Ukraine, it and the Chinese government requested a UN commission to investigate the labs. The Western-aligned members of the Security Council blocked the investigation.
In a joint February 2022 statement, the Russian and Chinese governments—referring to themselves as “the sides”—stated:
The sides underline that Russia and China, as world powers and permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, [. . .] strongly advocate the international system with the central coordinating role of the United Nations in international affairs, defend the world order based on international law, including the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
As permanent UN Security Council members, neither the Russian nor the Chinese government, despite their apparent unwavering commitment to “sustainable development,” seem to actually wish to see “developing countries” have greater “voting rights” at the UN. Instead, their apparent objective is to consolidate their own elevated positions within the hierarchy established by the UN Charter.
The other three permanent members of the Security Council, equally eager to retain their dominance, take the same stance on the Charter.
US President Joe Biden, for instance, called the Charter the “foundation of a stable international rules-based order.”
France’s President Emanuel Macron said the Charter promises “a modern international order.”
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the UK government would work to “uphold international law and the United Nations Charter.”
Despite current geopolitical tensions, these countries unanimously agree not only on the role of the UN Charter but also on every facet of the UN’s touted “sustainable development.”
— SDG16.8 promises to strengthen the “institutions of global governance.” It does not promise a form of global governance that will benefit humanity.
— Even though the UN remains a blatantly political organisation riven with internecine conflicts, the supposed hostility between East and West does not extend to re-imagining the “global governance regime.” There is, instead, unanimous agreement to strengthen it.
— In terms of G3P-forwarded sustainable development, national governments are enabling public partners to advance their own interests by implementing the UN’s politically motivated SDG policies and by exploiting the politically driven UN Charter. There is no evidence, from any quarter, that any national government values the humanitarian principles that either the SDGs or the UN Charter purportedly embody.
From Global Governance to a Global Police State: Interpol’s Global Policing Goals
Placed after SDG16.10, SDG16.a calls for strengthening “relevant national institutions, including through international cooperation, for building capacity at all levels” with the goal of preventing “violence” and for combating “terrorism and crime.”
In 2018, the UN identified Interpol as the law enforcement organisation that was “uniquely positioned to be the implementing partner of a number of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”
This designation as “implementing partner” of the SDGs led Interpol to develop its Seven Global Policing Goals, which, it says, are “aligned with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. [. . .] This applies especially to Goal 16 [SDG16].”
Interpol outlines what it hopes to achieve with its “sustainable” law enforcement:
As the only police organization that works at the global level, Interpol plays a unique role in supporting international policing efforts. To do this in a consistent manner across the world, it is important that all actors in the global security architecture share an understanding of the threats and work towards the same outcomes. [. . .] Global Policing Goals focus the collective efforts of the international law enforcement community to create a safer and more sustainable world for future generations.
Many of Interpol’s Global Policing Goals necessitate the type of surveillance that can most easily be enabled by introducing digital IDs and CBDCs (a topic that will be discussed in detail in Part 2). For instance, most of the seven goals share a sub-goal that refers to the need to “trace and disrupt financial streams” and, elsewhere, the need to “identify and disrupt illicit financial streams” of “criminals” and “terrorists.”
Global Policing Goal 6, for example, focuses on curbing “illicit markets” and contains these sub-goals: “build mechanisms to detect emerging illicit markets” and “strengthen capacity to investigate and prevent illicit trade.”
This kind of work obviously calls for tools that can conduct mass financial surveillance. In order to preside over such operations, Interpol must first obtain the authority to access a system of mass financial surveillance.
Conveniently, the required global surveillance of commercial activity and money flows—to be explored Part 2—can be achieved through the realization of SDG16.9’s digital ID paradigm, whereby biometric digital ID is a prerequisite for participation in the economy. This idea is explicitly promoted by the UN paper “The People’s Money: Harnessing Digitalization to Finance a Sustainable Future.”
However, it is not just mass financial surveillance that Interpol seeks. A sub-goal of its Global Policing Goal 2 (“promote border integrity worldwide”) is to “identify criminal and victim movements and travel.”
To fulfil that goal, tools for mass geolocation surveillance of the world’s population would be needed. How handy that Interpol’s I-Checkit programme is designed to both achieve this ambition and centralise control of and access to the global population surveillance system.
Specifically, the I-Checkit programme pushes for countries to “heighten” their “identity management measures.” It also urges airlines, the maritime industry and banks to collaborate in real-time with law enforcement to decide whether or not a person should be allowed to travel.
Though Interpol’s Goal 2 is being billed as a means of stopping “organized crime,” it is more likely meant to further the UN’s ambitious digital ID agenda. As we witnessed when digital vaccine passports were introduced during the faux pandemic, the rollout and enforcement of biometric digital ID presents a tangible threat to everyone’s freedom of movement and civil liberties.
Unsurprisingly, Interpol has already teamed up with a variety of biometric digital ID companies, two of which (Idemia and Onfido, to be precise) played a major role in facilitating vaccine passports during COVID-19 and more recently have been creating “digital driver’s licenses” (that is, biometric digital IDs) for several US states.
Goal 4 of Interpol’s SDG-related Global Policing Goals is to “secure cyberspace.” One of its related sub-goals is to “establish partnerships to secure cyberspace.” The chief partnership that Interpol has joined in service of fulfilling this goal is the WEF’s Partnership Against Cybercrime (WEF-PAC).
A few facts about WEF-PAC:
(1) Its members, like Interpol, aim to “secure cyberspace.” They are mainly law enforcement agencies from the US, UK and Israel, but they also include some of the world’s largest commercial banks and fintech companies.
(2) It has been advocating the creation of a global fin-cyber entity to regulate the internet, with the ultimate goals of ending financial privacy and preventing anonymity under the guise of combating “cybercrime.”
(3) It is run by Tal Goldstein, a career Israeli intelligence operative who designed an intelligence policy that transformed Israel’s private cybersecurity industry into a cut-out for that country’s intelligence operations.
WEF-PAC argues for its purpose by pointing out:
[I]n order to reduce the global impact of cybercrime and to systematically restrain cybercriminals, cybercrime must be confronted at its source by raising the cost of conducting cybercrimes, cutting the activities’ profitability and deterring criminals by increasing the direct risk they face.
To achieve these goals, WEF-PAC envisions “harnessing the private sector to work side by side with law enforcement officials.” This is a typical G3P move—and one that sounds similar to the model Interpol follows with its I-Checkit programme.
Shockingly, WEF-PAC calls for public-private “cooperation” even if it’s “not always aligned with existing legislative and operational frameworks.” In other words, cooperation should be permitted even if it is illegal.
Granted, most of WEF-PAC’s materials refer to cybercriminals as those who engage in hacks or ransomware attacks and other truly criminal activities. Yet in one place it broadens the definition of “cybercriminals” to include those who use technology to “uphold terrorism” and “spread disinformation to destabilize governments and democracies.”
Ending Anonymity: Why The WEF’s Partnership Against Cybercrime Threatens The Future Of Privacy
With many focusing on tomorrow’s Cyber Polygon exercise, less attention has been paid to the World Economic Forum’s real ambitions in cybersecurity – to create a global organization aimed at gutting even the possibility of anonymity online. With the governments of the US, UK and Israel on board, along with some of the world’s most powerful corporations, it is important to pay attention to their endgame, not just the simulations.
Thus, we see a several-pronged attack on the so-called spreaders of “disinformation”: They will not only be made out as criminals by the implementation of SDG16.10 and by the ABC crackdown, they will also be subject to Interpol’s SDG16-linked Global Policing Goal of “securing cyberspace” and to WEF-PAC’s pursuit of government-destabilizers.
From multiple angles, then, SDG16 and its implementing partners are seeking to construct a surveillance paradigm where dissenters’ speech and financial transactions are closely monitored, criminalized, and targeted. The “strong institutions,” strengthened even further by SDG16, will be used to keep societies “peaceful”—i.e., free of the “crime” of resisting tyranny—through mass surveillance of the internet and of all commercial activity as well as the mandatory use of digital IDs.
“Pay-to-Play” Justice Systems
The current president of Interpol is the General Inspector of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Interior Ministry, Maj Gen Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi. Worryingly, he has been accused of overseeing the torture of citizens from the UK, Qatar, Turkey, the UAE, and elsewhere.
Despite the UK government’s close political and commercial relationship with the UAE, prior to Al-Raisi’s “election” as Interpol President, former Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales Sir David Calvert-Smith published a report concerning Al-Raisi and the UAE’s influence upon Interpol’s opaque internal election processes.
The report noted:
The President [of Interpol] sits at the top of the entire Interpol structure and commands considerable power and authority. [. . .] [T]he mechanism for the election of the President is far from transparent. Interpol has declined repeated requests by rights organisations to demystify the presidential election process. [. . .] Interpol is not a transparent organisation.
Aside: Interpol’s lack of transparency is, of course, at odds with the UN Post-2015 Development Agenda’s declared commitment to foster a “transparent and representative global governance regime.”
Turning its attention to Al-Raisi, the report added:
Since Al-Raisi’s appointment as General Inspector of the Ministry of Interior of the UAE in 2015, there have been [. . .] numerous allegations of torture and abuse in Emirati jails, both in Abu Dhabi as well as in Dubai’s prisons and jails. [. . .] Major General Al-Raisi is unsuitable for the role. [. . .] He has overseen an increased crackdown on dissent, continued torture, and abuses in its criminal justice system. [. . .] He is a far from ideal candidate for leadership of one of the world’s most important policing organisations.
Whether the allegations cited in Calvert-Smith’s report had been proven or not, given the controversy, it seems remarkable that Interpol proceeded to appoint Al-Raisi.
But perhaps we shouldn’t be shocked. After all, this isn’t the first time that Interpol, the UN regime’s “implementing partner” for sustainable, global law enforcement, has been headed by questionable characters.
In 2008, Interpol’s then-President Jack Selebi resigned after he was charged with bribery. Selebi was subsequently sentenced to 15 years in a South African prison for taking bribes from international drug traffickers in return for protecting them from investigation.
In 2018, China’s Vice Minister of Public Security, Meng Hongwei, vanished from his post as Interpol President and resigned soon thereafter. In 2020, he was sentenced in China to more than 13 years’ imprisonment for accepting an estimated $2 million (USD) in bribes.
Digging deeper, we find that Interpol’s alleged history of being led by criminals and torturers is only the most visible part of its corruption.
Interpol has been given the authority to issue international arrest warrants, often referred to as “Red Notices.” Similar to international extradition requests, they notify national law enforcement agencies that one of Interpol’s 194 member states has issued a warrant and is seeking the named person(s). Red Notice recipient states apply different jurisdictional interpretations. Some consider them active warrants, others merely advisory or alert notices.
The Calvert-Smith report found that abuse of Red Notices by authoritarian regimes seeking to detain political dissidents or opponents was commonplace:
In blunt terms, there is strong evidence that despotic states issue Interpol Red Notices in order to arrest and extradite political opponents and business-people whose interests do not align with the regime. [. . .] The UAE is notorious for its abuse of Interpol — many of their requests have been removed. [. . .] The UAE has a poor human rights record[,] meaning that extradition to the UAE exposes individuals to the risk of torture and mistreatment[,] and political changes have meant that a person can become an “enemy of the state” overnight.
Why has abuse of Red Notices seemingly passed through the Interpol system “undetected”? Looking at the financial “support” UAE gave to Interpol prior to Al-Raisi’s eyebrow-raising elevation to President, the Calvert-Smith report observed:
The Interpol Foundation for a Safer World was set up in 2013 and is a not-for-profit organisation[.] [. . .] Its sole purpose is to [financially] support Interpol. [. . .] It seems that the foundation is in fact totally reliant on the UAE. [. . .] It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Interpol Foundation for a Safer World’s sole purpose is to be a channel by which to funnel cash from the UAE government into Interpol.
Interpol also happily accepts money from NGOs, philanthropic foundations, governments and private corporations—all the while insisting it is apolitical and incorruptible.
Following a 2015 investigation of Interpol, journalist Jake Wallace Simons reported:
Interpol has signed deals with a large number of private “partners,” including tobacco giants, pharmaceutical firms and tech companies — such as Philip Morris International, Sanofi, and Kaspersky Lab — the proceeds of which have swollen its operational budget by almost a third.
In other words, Interpol’s “international policing efforts” can be bought, if you can afford them. Its deal with Philip Morris International (PMI), for example, effectively compelled Interpol to promote PMI’s “Codentify” tobacco package marker system to its member states. The alleged purpose of Codentify was to tackle the international counterfeit and illicit tobacco trade.
The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), adopted in 2003, established a protocol for tobacco track and trace systems. It viewed its work as central to efforts to tackle the illicit and counterfeit tobacco trade. However, only 7% of that total trade consisted of counterfeit products. The vast bulk of tobacco smuggling was comprised of the illegal distribution and sale of authentic tobacco industry products.
Therefore, the idea that a global tobacco corporation (PMI) should use its own track and trace system (Codentify) in partnership with a global law enforcement agency (Interpol) to “seize” illicit tobacco looked more like an attempt to control the illegal tobacco trade rather than end it.
The head of the FCTC Secretariat, Vera da Costa e Silva, observed:
Both the FCTC and its Protocol are crystal clear that the tobacco industry is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Yet, despite Interpol’s suspect track record, the UN would have us believe that Interpol is the ideal “implementing partner” for a number of SDGs, most specifically SDG16.
Hardly. Considering how Interpol defines the threats that will be policed by the “global security architecture” under the auspices of the “global governance regime,” there is no reason to be confident that it will help prevent “violence” or reduce “terrorism and crime.”
There are no grounds to believe that Interpol is capable of delivering its 5th Global Policing Goal to “promote global integrity” by proclaiming “good governance and the rule of law” and “a culture of integrity where corruption is not acceptable.”
Nor do we have much cause to hope that SDG16 related “laws” will be equitably enforced by the UN’s affiliate, the International Criminal Court (ICC).
First, some history:
In 1993, the UN created the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The ICTY eventually convicted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić in 2016 and Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladić in 2017 for genocide and crimes against humanity.
In 1994, the UN set up the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. And in 2002, in cooperation with the government of Sierra Leone, it established the Special Court for Sierra Leone to investigate the atrocities inflicted during the country’s civil war (1991–2002).
Combined, these initiatives provided impetus for the UN to create the world’s first permanent international centre of justice: the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The original motivation for the creation of the ICC, however, is said to have come from the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). (More on the ICJ later.) The ICJ took credit as one of the main stakeholders driving the 1998 ratification of the Rome Statute, which laid the legal foundations for the subsequent ICC.
The ICC is purportedly independent, although it functions within the parameters set by its “mutually beneficial” Relationship Agreement with the UN.
Article 3 of the ICC-UN agreement states:
The United Nations and the Court agree that, [. . .] they shall cooperate closely, whenever appropriate, with each other and consult each other on matters of mutual interest pursuant to the provisions of the present Agreement and in conformity with the respective provisions of the Charter and the Statute.
Considering that the UN is overtly political organisation, the ICC’s close cooperation with that intergovernmental body suggests that the ICC, too, could be politically biased.
The evidence provides good reason to suspect that’s the case:
— The US, Russian and Chinese government are not signatories to the Rome Statute and don’t recognise its jurisdiction, but, by virtue of Article 13(b) of the Statute, their status as permanent members of the Security Council allows them to make referrals to the ICC prosecutor. Consequently, the ICC could be used by them for politically motivated prosecutions.
— In March 2023 the ICC issued an international arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova. The charges: the war crimes of unlawful deportation of population (children) and of unlawful transfer of populations (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.
The Western mainstream media (MSM) alleges that up to 16,000 children were “illegally deported.” Roman Kashayev, a member of the Russian Permanent Mission to the UN, reported that approximately 730,000 children were relocated deeper within Russian borders from, what are now, the Russian oblasts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya. The relocation would seem a sensible precaution in light of the Ukrainian military’s continual shelling of civilian areas in the targeted oblasts.
The Russian Federation government admits that some of these children travelled without their parents, whose whereabouts, it claims, are unknown. It is of course possible that some illegal activity has taken place amidst the evacuation. But there are also reasons to suspect that the ICC warrants were issued as a result of political pressure.
The ICC Chief Prosecutor who submitted the warrant request is UK lawyer and King’s Council Karim Khan KC, who works out of the prestigious Temple Chambers in London. He submitted the warrant application on the 22nd February 2023. The ICC formally issued the warrant on the 17th March 2023.
On the 3rd March 2023, two weeks after he submitted the application, Khan delivered a speech to the United4Justice conference in Lviv, Ukraine, during which he said:
I’ve been with the Prosecutor General [of Ukraine.] [. . .] The men and women of my office have been to so many locations [with the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office.] [. . .] Unfortunately, Ukraine is a crime scene. [. . .] We’ve received [allegations] that children how been deported outside Ukraine, into the territory of the Russian Federation. [. . .] Our yardstick is evidence. It is to look at and investigate affirmatively incriminating and exculpatory evidence equally. But we have this commitment.
Khan’s remarks suggest that he submitted the warrant request based upon “received” allegations alone. While the commitment to “look” for evidence is quite normal, it is perhaps unusual to accuse a major world leader and his staff of effective child trafficking and war crimes without any apparent evidence. Again, political motivation seems likely.
The United4Justice campaign is a Western-backed political operation working in Ukraine. It claims its intention is to construct a “web of accountability for international crimes.” A look at the United4Justice initiatives, however, reveals some questionable sponsors—among them, USAID, a known CIA front organisation; Pravo-Justice, an EU-backed programme focused on aligning Ukrainian law with the EU legal system; and the International Renaissance Foundation (IRF), a Soros-funded Ukrainian NGO that, like Pravo-Justice, seeks legal reform in Ukraine. In short, the political agenda of these organisations and of the United4Justice campaign they support is resoundingly anti-Russian.
Moreover, the United4Justice conference that Khan addressed was organised by Ukrainian authorities and the EU Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust). They are keen to see the Russian Federation prosecuted for the new international crime of “aggression.”
To this end, Eurojust has established the International Centre for Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (ICPA). According to Eurojust, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (Khan’s office) “may take part in the cooperation via the ICPA when certain conditions are met.”
On 20 March 2023, three days after the ICC issued the warrant, the UK government convened an international meeting—hosted by the UK Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab—at which it announced a boost in UK funding for the ICC, doubling its previous contribution. The purpose of the funding, said the UK government, was to ensure that “more UK experts,” like Karim Khan, worked for the ICC. Khan delivered one of the opening speeches.
There is no discernible difference between the UK government funding the ICC and the UAE government funding Interpol. The objective in each case is to garner influence.
The only logical conclusion one can reach is that, far from being “unbiased” international institutions suitable for delivering the UN’s SDGs, both Interpol and the ICC appear to adopt the biases of the highest bidder by engaging in “pay-to-play” schemes.
We aren’t the only ones to draw this conclusion.
Earlier this year, for instance, academic researchers from the University of Arkansas and the London School of Economics published their findings on the influence of funding upon the ICC. They noted:
The patterns of funding seen at the ICC support the claim that the Court remains, to a significant extent, a tool of powerful states.
Serbian lawyer Goran Petronijevic, a legal adviser to the ICTY, agrees with this assessment. Recently he called Khan’s ICC warrant “a political act. It is not a legal act. It is a provocation against Russia.”
Indeed, the ICC has been mired in controversy since its inception. When the investigative journalists of the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network looked into the activities of Khan’s predecessor, ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, they determined that his actions had “tainted and discredited” the ICC.
Ocampo had served as Chief Prosecutor of the ICC for nearly a decade. It is evident that he held numerous offshore accounts during his tenure. His involvement in the murky business dealings of Libyan tycoon Hassan Tatanaki, not to mention ICC officials’ continuing assistance to Tatanaki after Ocampo’s departure, raise further concerns about ICC integrity.
In sum, to believe that the ICC and Interpol are suitable organisations to promote “the rule of law” requires considerable credulity. Yet, in pursuit of SDG16, suitability is precisely what the UN regime and its partners assert.
SDG16.2: Dangerous UN Hypocrisy
SDG16 promises to eradicate many of the worst crimes in today’s world, including crimes committed against children. For instance, the aim of SDG16.2 is:
End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children.
Yet, contrary to all evidence, ethics, common sense and criminal law, it seems that several important UN partners and “stakeholders” don’t consider paedophilia to be a form of child abuse.
The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), which was instrumental in the formation of the ICC, is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that has long been a close “partner” of the UN. The UN and the ICJ have collaborated on numerous joint projects, such as spreading SDG messaging among academic institutions.
The ICJ is an influential UN stakeholder. In 1993, the UN gave the ICJ its Human Rights award for the following reasons:
The International Commission of Jurists was established to uphold the rule of law and the legal protection of human rights throughout the world. It has actively contributed to the elaboration of international and regional standards and has helped to secure their adoption and implementation by governments. The Commission has closely collaborated with the United Nations and actively works at the regional level to strengthen human rights institutions.
The ICJ convened in 1952 as an overtly geopolitical organisation. Its stated purpose was to denounce “human rights abuses,” but only in the Soviet Union. It subsequently broadened its remit and started looking at abuses elsewhere.
In March of this year, The ICJ published its “8 March Principles.” Its alleged objective was “to offer a clear, accessible and workable legal framework — as well as practical legal guidance — on applying the criminal law to conduct.”
In “8 March Principles,” the ICJ advocates:
With respect to the enforcement of criminal law, any prescribed minimum age of consent to sex must be applied in a non-discriminatory manner. Enforcement may not be linked to the sex/gender of participants or age of consent to marriage. Moreover, sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law. In this context, the enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them.
This language opens up the distinct possibility that predatory paedophiles, should they ever be charged, may be able to offer mitigation if they or their lawyers can convince their child targets to testify that they gave their consent.
As we know, coercion is a common paedophile practice. Many child protection organisations—the UK-based National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) among them—recognise that coercion is part of the grooming process:
Grooming is a process that involves the offender building a relationship with a child, and sometimes with their wider family, gaining their trust and a position of power over the child, in preparation for abuse.
Following publication of “8 March Principles,” the ICJ responded to criticism by presenting some straw man arguments.
First, the ICJ said it did not “call for the decriminalization of sex with children.”
Second, the ICJ said it did not suggest “the abolition of a domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex.”
Third, the ICJ explained that it was simply offering clear legal guidance to “parliamentarians, judges, prosecutors and advocates.”
True, quite clearly the ICJ did not advocate decriminalising paedophilia.
True, quite clearly the ICJ did not advocate the abolition of the age of consent.
But . . . the ICJ did, quite clearly, introduce the notion, in law, that a child has the “human right” to consent to being raped by an adult.
It is far from clear how lawmakers should interpret this “legal framework and practical legal guidance.”
It is abundantly clear, however, that the ICJ has introduced legal ambiguity where there should be absolutely no legal ambiguity at all.
Sad to say, we should not be surprised by the “8 March Principles.” The UN regime and its multistakeholder partners have an appalling track record of not protecting children.
The WHO regional office for Europe—a UN specialist agency—and the German Federal Centre for Health Education (BZgA) jointly published in 2010 (and updated in 2016) guidelines for schools, titled “Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe.” The authors call their guidance “a framework for policy makers, educational and health authorities and specialists.”
The WHO agreed with Bzga that educators should provide, to infants aged 0-to-4, information about “enjoyment and pleasure when touching one’s own body” as well as information about “early childhood masturbation.”
The WHO says this information should be set within the context that “enjoyment of physical closeness” is “normal.” Even infants, the WHO says, should be taught that “physical closeness as an expression of love and affection.”
According to the WHO, children aged 4-to-6 years should learn to identify potential abusers. It then outlines the advice educators should provide to children in this age range—advice that, the WHO claims, will potentially enable 4- and 5- and 6-year-olds to identify possible risks:
There are some people who are not good; they pretend to be kind, but might be violent.
Of course, all sexual abuse of children is an appalling act of violence, but children may not immediately perceive it as such until well after the act has been committed. Survivors of abuse don’t tend to come to terms with the horrendous psychological and often physical damage inflicted upon them until later in life.
Thus, teaching infants about “sexual pleasure” and telling them that “physical closeness is normal” and “an expression of love,” while simultaneously teaching them that sexual abuse only manifests as “violence,” would appear to place young children at even greater risk of grooming and paedophilia. Such “education” disarms, rather than forewarns, the child.
As for 9-to-12-year-old children, the WHO and the BzgA recommend that they develop the skills to “take responsibility in relation to safe and pleasant sexual experiences for oneself and others.” The WHO believes these children should be able to “make a conscious decision to have sexual experiences or not.”
The WHO is a UN agency and the ICJ is an influential UN “partner.” Contrary to their humanitarian pretensions, the WHO-led “educational guidance,” combined with the ICJ’s legal framework, serves the interests of paedophiles and endangers the lives of children.
Something Is Very Wrong
We will examine SDG 16.9 and expand our exploration of the “interoperable” digital ID network established by the ID2020 Alliance (global public-private partnership) in Part 2. For now, let’s just consider the publicly stated ambition of ID2020:
By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.
In its pursuit of SDG16.9, ID2020 set up a partnership between the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and iRespond. The purpose of the partnership was to roll out biometric ID for newborns in the Karen refugee population along the Myanmar-Thailand border.
Heavily promoted by the West’s MSM, the project tied the Karen refugees’ access to food aid and other vital services to their participation in this digital ID system.
Importantly, partners IRC and iRespond said participation in the project was voluntary. But in the same breath, they made it clear that the refugees’ “vaccine status” would be incorporated into their digital IDs.
For the Karen people, access to food and health care hinged upon them presenting approved biometric ID. Registering for the ID was dependent upon their vaccine “status.” Thus, the Karen people were forced to accept vaccination and use digital ID or face starvation and disease without access to medical treatment.
Suffice it to say, there was no IRC or iRespond commitment to freedom, justice and peace. Instead, this UN partner-led project comprehensively ignored the rights of the Karen people.
The ID2020 Alliance’s decision to allow the IRC anywhere near refugee families—the most vulnerable population of all—was injudicious, to say the least. The IRC was one of fifteen “international aid organisations” embroiled in the sex–for–food scandal.
When the scandal came to light in 2000, the UN commissioned an investigation into the activities of its affiliated private aid “partners” and its own aid agencies. The subsequent report found evidence that workers from 40 local and international charities—the latter included the IRC—were in “sexually exploitative relationships with children.” Bluntly put, UN “stakeholder partner” organisations, including the IRC, were infested with child rapists.
The report clearly identified the widespread practice of providing food in exchange for sex—including paedophilia—in refugee camps. Yet the UN suppressed the report for more than sixteen years.
The UN has been equally slow to investigate the wealth of evidence implicating its own peacekeepers in child rape and trafficking operations in 23 countries, notably Haiti and Sri Lanka, as revealed in an April 2017 Associated Press exposé and follow-up.
As if the Haitian children hadn’t already been tortured enough by the UN “peacekeepers,” their victimization wasn’t over. After the January 2010 earthquake, known child trafficker Laura Silsby was caught for the second time attempting to traffic Haitian children. The children she snatched were supposed to be under the protection of the UN. Silsby claimed they were destined for an orphanage in the Dominican Republic, but there was no record of her making any of the required transit applications to Dominican authorities.
In May 2009, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had appointed Bill Clinton special envoy to Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Post-earthquake, Clinton was the obvious choice to be the UN’s international coordinator for Haitian relief efforts. He was thus perfectly positioned to pressure Haitian authorities on Silsby’s behalf, after which she walked free. The evidence strongly suggests that Silsby (now Laura Gayler) was part of larger child trafficking operation involving her originally retained lawyer, Jorge Puello, and his wife.
Interesting that the ICC, which saw fit to issue an arrest warrant to President Putin for child trafficking in Ukraine, has not charged former US President Clinton in connection with child trafficking in Haiti.
Perhaps that “oversight” is due to the Clinton Foundation being so deeply embedded in the global governance regime’s public-private structure?
In 2016, the Clinton Global Initiative, which has been credited with directing philanthropy toward sustainable development, hosted an event to garner support for the UN Trust Fund (UNTF), whose stated mission is to end violence against women and girls. Unbelievably, that same year, it was first reported that defence lawyers for paedophile sex trafficker and intelligence asset Jeffrey Epstein had written that their client was a key part of the small group that had “conceived the Clinton Global Initiative.”
According to the UN, the purpose of the UNTF gathering was to “announce a series of Commitments to Action aiming to advance the gender equality targets of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.” Apparently, this aim is to be achieved through “partnership” with known facilitators of child trafficking.
We might wonder why anyone would “trust” the UN “global governance regime” to “[e]nd abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children”—when its specialist agencies and stakeholders and special envoy, plus its peacekeepers and partners, have been caught on innumerable occasions either committing or sanctioning these very crimes.
It is not unreasonable to say that the UN and its agencies and “partners” present a significant risk to children. Clearly—clearly—there is something very wrong at the heart of this dangerous regime.
Peace and Justice for Whom?
The UN is a corrupt “global governance regime.” It continues to deceive the global population about the acres of separation between so-called “human rights” and our real “inalienable rights,” which it studiously ignores and wilfully subverts.
Nation-states compete for influence within the orbit of the UN regime. The governments of those nation-states are part of the vast network, formed by the regime and its various public and private “partners,” that is attempting to implement SDG16.
Most of the SDG16 targets are intended to “reform” sovereign systems of justice and law enforcement and decision-making processes for the benefit of the regime.
SDG16 represents an obvious attempt to consolidate power in the hands of the regime at the expense of national sovereignty and human freedom. This is a matter of extreme concern for many reasons, perhaps most notably because our children must be safeguarded. As things stand, the regime appears to present a clear threat to children across the world.
Natural Law determines that “an unjust law is no law at all”: lex iniusta non est lex. Since there is no evidence that the system of alleged “international law” operating within the aegis of the UN and its Charter is, or has ever been, applied fairly and since it does not meet the standard of “just law,” it is, therefore, “no law at all.”
Within the deliberative bodies that constitute the UN regime, “might” continues to be viewed as “right.” Institutions that the UN advocates and partners with—the ICJ, Interpol, and the ICC, to name but three—are deeply flawed. These institutions are unfit to play any role, let alone a leading one, in the administration of justice.
There is no reason to believe that the SDG16’s pretensions to promote peace and justice and inclusivity will do anything for the world as a whole, much less anything to resolve the fundamental failings inherent in the UN’s scurrilous and disreputable system of alleged “global governance.”
You may wonder what Sustainable Development Goal 16—or this article about it—has to do with protecting the planet and its inhabitants from the predicted “climate disaster.” The answer is: nothing at all. But then, “climate change” is merely the proffered rationale that purportedly legitimises and lends urgency to sustainable development.
Establishing firm global governance—in effect, a world dictatorship—through the implementation of SDGs is the United Nations’ real objective. “Climate change” is just the excuse. Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than SDG16.9. And this is why we will exclusively focus on 16.9 in Part 2 of our exploration of SDG16.
Source: Unlimited Hangout
SDG16: Part 2 — Enforcing Digital Identity
The United Nations claims that the purpose of Sustainable Development Goal 16 (SDG16) is to promote peaceful and inclusive societies and to provide access to justice for all. Hiding behind the rhetoric is the real objective: to strengthen and consolidate the power and authority of the “global governance regime” and to exploit threats—both real and imagined—in order to advance regime hegemony. In Part 2, Iain and Whitney examine the centrality of Digital ID (SDG 16.9) in this endeavour.
By Iain Davis and Whitney Webb
October 3, 2023
In Part 1 of our investigation into the United Nations’ (UN’s) Sustainable Development Goal 16 (SDG16) we revealed how the UN proclaims itself a “global governance regime.” We investigated the UN’s exploitation of so-called “human rights” as an authoritarian system of behavioural control permits, as opposed to any form of recognisable “rights.”
We examined how the UN uses what is calls the “policy tool” of human rights to place citizens (us) at the centre of international crises. This enables the UN and its “stakeholder partners” to seize crises as “opportunities” to limit and control our behaviour. The global public-private partnership (G3P), with the UN at its heart, redefines and even discards our supposed “human rights” entirely, claiming “crisis” as justification.
The overall objective of SDG16 is to strengthen the UN regime. The UN acknowledges that SDG16.9 is the most crucial of all its goals. It is, the regime claims, essential for the attainment of numerous other SDGs.
At first, SDG16.9 seems relatively innocuous:
By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration
But, as ever, when it comes to UN sustainable development, all is not as it initially appears.
SDG16.9 is designed to introduce a centrally controlled, global system of digital identification (digital ID). In combination with other global systems, such as interoperable Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), this can then be used to monitor our whereabouts, limit our freedom of movement and control our access to money, goods and services.
Universal adoption of SDG16.9 digital ID will enable the G3P global governance regime’s to establish a worldwide system of reward and punishment. If we accept the planned model of digital ID, it will ultimately enslave us in the name of sustainable development.
Digital ID As A Human Right
As we previously discussed, The UN underwent a “quiet revolution” in the 1990s. In 1998, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stated that “the business of the United Nations involves the businesses of the world.”
Government’s reduced role was to create the regulatory “enabling environment” for private investors, alongside taxpayers, to finance what would become SDGs. Using the highly questionable “climate crisis” as an alleged justification, in 2015, the UN’s Millennium Development Goals gave way to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
On the 25th September 2015, UN General Assembly Resolution 70.1 (A/Res/70.1) formally established the SDGs by adopting the binding resolution to work towards “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”
As soon as the ink was dry on the resolution, the UN set about creating the enabling environment to encourage public-private partnerships to develop a system of global, digital ID. In May 2016, in response to SDG16.9, the United Nations Office for Partnerships convened the “ID2020 Summit – Harnessing Digital Identity for the Global Community.” This established the ID2020 Alliance.
The ID2020 Alliance is a global public-private partnership that has been setting the future course of digital identity since its founding. The global accountancy and corporate branding giant PwC was selected by the UN as the “lead sponsor” of the inaugural ID2020 summit in 2016. Excited about the opportunities digital ID would present, PwC described the ID2020 sustainable development objective:
[. . . .] to create technology-driven public-private partnerships to achieve the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goal of providing legal identity for everyone on the planet. [. . .] Specifically, ID2020’s mission aligns with development target 16.9, “Legal identity for all, including birth registration”. Thirty percent of the world’s population, approximately 1.5 billion people, lack a legal identity, leaving them vulnerable to legal, political, social and economic exclusion.
Offering us digital ID to address so-called “economic exclusion,”—more on this shortly—the ID2020 Alliance duly launched in 2017 and set its Agenda2030 goal:
Enabling access to digital identity for every person on the planet.
You will note that the UN’s SDG16.9 makes no mention of global “digital ID.” Sustainable development, as it is presented to us, is nothing if not deceptive.
The ID2020 Alliance announced a “strategic, global initiative” for digital ID that presented humanity with a quite astonishing idea. The regime stated that the lack of “legal identity”—digital ID—prevented people from accessing “healthcare, schools, shelter, justice, and other government services,” thereby allegedly creating what it called “the identity gap.”
Empowered by the “global governance regime,” the ID2020 Alliance expanded on the idea that we are only permitted to live in “its” society if we can prove who we are, using its digital ID, to the satisfaction of the G3P regime.
The ID2020 manifesto states:
The ability to prove one’s identity is a fundamental and universal human right. [. . .] We live in a digital era. Individuals need a trusted, verifiable way to prove who they are, both in the physical world and online. [. . .] ID2020 Alliance partners jointly define functional requirements, influencing the course of technical innovation and providing a route to technical interoperability, and therefore trust and recognition.
SDG16.9 “sustainable development” means we must use digital ID that meets the functional requirements of the ID2020 Alliance partnership. Otherwise we will not be protected in law, service access will be denied, our right to transact in the modern economy will be removed, we will be barred from participating as “citizens” and excluded from so-called “democracy.”
This past August, ID2020 joined with the Digital Impact Alliance (DIA) to “push for digital transformation.” That said, ID2020 “joining” DIA is a bit of a misnomer, considering that both of these public-private partnerships are essentially run by the same organisations.
Speaking about the launch of its “partnership” with DIA, ID2020 founder John Edge, said:
[W]e established ID2020 to be a time-bound exploration of alternative systems for individuals to prove they exist.
In accordance with SDG16.9 “transformation,” if you don’t have the properly authorised digital ID then, as far as the regime is concerned, you don’t exist. As DIA explains, everyone must have “the trusted digital tools they need to fully participate in society.” If you don’t submit, you are literally nobody and thereby excluded from “society.”
The DIA calls its methodology “do[ing] digital right.” Its backers, such as the UN, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID (widely believed to be a front for the CIA) and the UK and Norwegian governments, are all behind the DIA mission:
We use our expertise to influence the influential, encouraging the world’s largest investors and most effective policymakers to “do digital right”, emphasizing the importance of design, implementation, and governance.
Establishing global governance “with teeth” is the primary objective of the G3P regime, and “sustainable development” is its chosen mechanism to achieve its ambitions. As a regime partner, the DIA has been entrusted as the steward of the regime’s associated Principles for Digital Development.
Among these “principles” is the commitment to harvest as much human data as possible and to provide “the right people” with access to that data:
When an initiative is data driven, quality information is available to the right people when they need it, and they are using those data to take action.
The “world’s largest investors” are particularly encouraged to use their money tackle the alleged “identity gap” in least developed countries (LDCs) first. This will be achieved by prioritising investment in “cross-sectoral digital public goods and architecture.”
Very graciously, the G3P will “allow LDCs to be the stewards of their national digital agendas”—providing, of course, that they fully comply with the right “agenda.”
Given the cross-cutting nature of digital and its role in reaching all of the SDG targets, we believe that the current moment in time is ideally suited for such a “push” in LDCs.
The objective is to marshal “the necessary resources to fund and achieve national and global targets.” That is to say, LDC national governments are “allowed” to adopt “digital transformation” policies aligned to “global targets.”
There is no doubt that the ID2020 Alliance fully appreciates the implications of what it is doing. In a now quite infamous 2018 article, one of the founding partners of ID2020, Microsoft, published the following:
As more and more transactions become digital in nature and are built around a single global identification standard, supported by Microsoft, the question of who will govern this evolving global community and economy becomes relevant. Especially since non-participants in this system would be unable to buy or sell goods or services.
While the regime talks about “inclusion,” it is building a global digital ID system that is inherently exclusionary and can punish regime critics or silence dissident voices by cutting them off from its “society.” Being forced to use digital ID against your will is not a “right,” but it can be called a “human right” because, as defined by the UN, those are not rights, they are policy tools.
A global system of biometric digital ID can only become “essential” for all if it is made “essential.” There is no current necessity for it. The need has to be manufactured first. Hence the proclaimed “identity gap.”
Interoperability Is The Key
Biometric data records our “unique biological characteristics.” Fingerprints, iris-scans, DNA, facial recognition and voice-identification are all forms of biometric identifiers that can be stored digitally. Thales, the European defence and security contractor, explains how biometric data can be used for “biometric authentication”:
Biometric authentication compares data for the person’s characteristics to that person’s biometric “template” to determine resemblance. The reference model is first stored. The data stored is then compared to the person’s biometric data to be authenticated. [. . .] [I]ncreased public acceptance, massive accuracy gains, a rich offer, and falling prices of sensors, I.P. cameras, and software make installing biometric systems easier. Today, many applications make use of this technology.
Biometric digital ID is “mapped” to your physical ID. Thus, once we are coerced, forced or deceived into using it, we will always be identifiable on the planned surveillance grid.
Biometric ID is already commonly used around the world. In the UK for example, all driving licenses require machine readable photo ID; the Chinese government requires photo ID to purchase a SIM card or use the internet and has more recently moved toward issuing a national biometric digital ID card. So you may wonder why the G3P regime is developing new forms of biometric digital ID to meet SDG16.9.
Hitherto, all these disparate biometric ID systems have been managed by various national governments, their agencies and corporate partners, etc. Different forms of biometric digital ID are required for everything from license application and welfare claims, to accessing service or opening a bank account.
There is currently no unified, coherent international system of digital ID. This is a problem if you want to use it to exert centralised global governance control over “every person on the planet.”
The ID2020 Alliance was established to rectify the regime’s centralised authority problem. SDG16.9 enables ID2020 to claim legitimacy. For the people who think sustainable development has something to do with “saving the planet” or tackling the “climate emergency,” SDG16.9 is another untouchable “goal” and, therefore, must be implemented for the good of humanity.
ID2020 does not intend to stipulate the precise form of each national, regional or corporate ID card, nor every biometric data solution. Instead, by defining the “functional requirements” of all, the intention is to make every single one of these various digital ID products and services “interoperable.”
While each digital ID “solution” may have different design specifications, the biometric data they harvest will be machine readable in accordance with ID2020 technical standards. Thus, regardless of where or when the data is gathered, or by whom, it will be possible to create and maintain a single global biometric digital ID database.
As ID2020 states in its manifesto:
[. . .] widespread agreement on principles, technical design patterns, and interoperability standards is needed for decentralized digital identities to be trusted and recognized. [. . .] As such, ID2020 Alliance-supported pilots are designed around a common monitoring and evaluation framework.
Digital ID won’t necessarily be offered to all as a single “ID card”—or even as anything that appears to resemble a regime-controlled digital ID. Our SDG16.9 digital ID will instead be a composition of the data we share every day.
Private “vendors” of digital ID-based “solutions” will offer a “decentralised” range of products and services that people may adopt, perhaps without even realizing they are effectively committing to enter the regime’s digital ID network.
It will all depend upon the national government’s assessment of what their respective populations are willing to accept or are likely to reject. For example, people in China, familiar with concepts like “datong,” may be more amenable to accepting an official, government-issued digital ID compared to Westerners schooled in more libertarian traditions.
It should be noted that there is nothing “libertarian” about SDG16.9 digital ID. For populations that are stiffly opposed to government control, deception appears to be the preferred SDG16.9 “solution.” We will discuss that subject shortly.
ID2020 certification encourages the interoperability of the various digital ID products and services. It enables the “vendors” of digital IDs to “share a commitment to key principles for digital ID, but remain technology- and vendor-agnostic.”
The ID2020 Alliance recounts:
In January 2019, the Alliance launched the ID2020 Certification Mark at the World Economic Forum in Davos. ID2020’s Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), made up of leading experts on digital ID and its underlying technologies, established a set of functional, outcomes-based technical requirements for user-managed, privacy-protecting and portable digital ID.
With the net effect:
Through our Certification Mark, we shape the technical landscape to ensure that the digital ID solutions which are developed and adopted are user-managed, privacy-protecting and interoperable.
Interoperability is achieved through a digital ID platform’s compliance with the ID2020 Technical Requirements. Key Requirement 6.2 demands that all digital ID products and services:
Must support open APIs [application programming interfaces] for access to data and integration with components / vendors.
6.4 adds that digital ID systems:
Must be able to export the data in a machine-readable form. Data when exported, [. . .] should itself be provided in an open standard machine-readable format enabling ease of import into a new system/component.
The Founding “partners” of the ID2020 “Alliance” are Accenture, GAVI, IDEO, Microsoft and the Rockefeller Foundation. Their role is to establish the technical requirements for all digital ID “solutions” to enable the supposedly necessary, global “interoperability.”
Digital ID is not being implemented by “civil authorities” as the UN’s SDG indicator 16.9.1 deceptively suggests. Governments are merely the enabling and enforcement “partners” in the ID2020 – G3P. The design and functionality of global digital ID system is, and always was, led by the private sector.
The UN Digital Solutions Centre (UN DSC) has already established the digital ID framework for UN personnel. The regime has constructed “a suite of digital solutions that can be shared among UN Agencies.” This interoperability between all components of the “suite” enables the “personal, Human Resources, medical, travel, security, payroll and pension data” of UN workers to be centralised.
A modular “suite” of digital solutions that are “interoperable” is an important concept to grasp, as it effectively creates a single system of digital identity while giving the public the impression that there are instead many “decentralised” systems of digital identity. The ID2020 aim is not to create a single global digital ID system, but rather to construct a global network of interoperable digital ID “solutions” to feed the so-called “decentralised” data into a centralised global database.
The regime can then collate, analyse and exploit the harvested biometric data from a centralised, global command point. This will facilitate the global governance regime’s intention to surveil the Earth’s population. As yet, the universal biometric database hasn’t been officially announced, but the World Bank’s ID4D has emerged as a strong potential candidate.
The Global Interoperable Digital ID Database?
As a founding “partner” of GAVI, the World Bank has been a key ID2020 partner from the outset. The ID2020 Alliance is among the endorsing organisations behind the World Bank’s ID4D “dataset” project.
In turn, the World Bank has produced the Catalogue of Technical Standards for Digital Identification Systems. This outlines the ID4D mission:
The mission of ID4D is to enable all people to access services and exercise their rights, by increasing the number of people who have an official form of identification. [. . .] Trusted and inclusive identification (ID) systems are crucial for development, as enshrined in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 16.9.
Recognising that many “vendors” are already developing digital ID “solutions,” the World Bank explains why it considers interoperability to be crucial:
Novel approaches, including decentralized and federated ID systems, are emerging rapidly along with new types of virtual and digital credentials. [. . .] The need for trusted and interoperable identification system has also intensified. Adherence to technical standards – henceforth “standards” – is one of the core building blocks of optimizing a system’s operations. [. . .] Standards are critical for identification systems to be trusted, interoperable and sustainable. The objective of this report is to identify the existing international technical standards and frameworks applicable across the identity lifecycle for technical interoperability.
The world “sustainable” is strewn throughout the regime’s written statements. By association, the intention appears to be to signal moral justification. In reality, “sustainable” here simply means “durable.”
The World Bank specifies the “standards” that it and its ID2020 partners expect digital ID products and services to comply with. It has divided these into five related categories.
Major standards to facilitate the technical quality and interoperability of the ID system related to: (1) biometrics, (2) cards, (3) 2D barcodes, (4) digital signatures, and (5) federation protocols.
Providing that developers comply with the stipulated standards, their digital ID solutions will be interoperable. For example India’s Aadhaar unique digital ID number uses “the ISO/IEC 19794 Series and ISO/IEC 19785 for biometric data interchange formats.” These are approved World Bank ID4D standards. In this case, Indian people’s biometric data can be exported in a “machine-readable format enabling ease of import into” the SDG16.9 compliant ID4D database.
Like ID2020, ID4D has formulated 10 principles for addressing the newly manufactured issue of the “identification gap,” a digital ID “gap” which ID4D claims to be an “obstacle for full participation in formal economic, social, and political life.”
The ID4D group states:
Growing awareness of the need for more inclusive, robust identification systems has led to a global call to action, embodied in Target 16.9 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). [. . . ] [T]here is no universally applicable ‘model’ for the provision and management of identity. [. . .] With this objective in mind, more than 15 global organizations have jointly developed a set of shared Principles that are fundamental to maximizing the benefits of identification systems for sustainable development[.] [. . .] These organizations have taken an important step towards developing a broad consensus on the appropriate design of identification systems and how they should—and should not—be used to support development and the achievement of multiple SDGs.
The ID4D and ID2020 organisations are supposedly distinct. Nonetheless, not only are their broad objectives practically identical, they are both supported by many of the same organisations:
ID4D is guided by the 10 Principles on Identification for Sustainable Development. [. . .] The work of ID4D is made possible through support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Government, The French Government, The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), and the Omidyar Network.
The ID4D Global Dataset produces “a global estimate of the ID gap.” The dataset currently incorporates “self-reported data from ID-issuing authorities.” For example, it gathers data from “UNICEF birth registration and voter registration rates.” Covering 151 countries so far, the intended scope of the dataset, at the “global level,” is to eventually “include all people aged 0 and above.”
In July 2022, the ID2020 Alliance appointed Clive Smith as its new executive director. Clive was the former Director of Global Operations at the United Nations Foundation Mobile Health Alliance. Speaking about his new role, Clive said:
ID2020 can play a pivotal role, helping ensure that the appropriately interoperable solutions – and related financial, legal, and regulatory guardrails – are in place, and become the foundation of digital ID in the decades ahead.
While significant SDG16.9 progress has been made in developing and emerging economies, digital ID interoperability needs to be firmly established before enforcing digital ID upon the rest of the world’s population.
To aid developers to achieve interoperability, the ID4D partnership has launched the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP). MOSIP is a modular software development environment based upon ID2020/ID4D “standards.” It was developed by the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B) in Karnataka, India.
MOSIP enables other protocols to be converted into interoperable standards for data sharing. For example it uses OpenCRVS as a “global solution for civil registration.” This transcribes HL7 FHIR compliant birth registration records into a MOSIP compatible “registration.”
MOSIP-based digital ID products can thereby be assured that they are interoperable:
A fully interoperable digital civil registration system is key to enabling inclusive and equitable government service delivery.
Both public and private “vendors” can use MOSIP software modules to construct their own digital ID system while ensuring compatibility with ID2020 and ID4D “Key Requirements.” This will facilitate the “interoperability” which is crucial for ID2020 to provide digital ID to “every person on the planet” and for ID4D to “include all people aged 0 and above” in its database.
Thus, seemingly “decentralised” digital ID data can be centralised and SDG16.9 can succeed as intended.
SDG16.9: Key To “Sustainable” Stewardship Global Digital Goods
In 2021, the UN announced an initiative deceptively named “Our Common Agenda.” The planned future of humanity, as laid out by this initiative, includes a new “social contract anchored in human rights” and the regime’s claim that it has somehow managed to acquire the authority to better manage “global public goods.” From where they obtained such authority, no one knows.
The UN contends that “global public goods” are “those issues that benefit humanity as a whole and that cannot be managed by any one State or actor alone.” In ‘Our Common Agenda’ the UN asserts:
One of the strongest calls emanating from the consultations on the seventy-fifth anniversary and Our Common Agenda was to strengthen the governance of our [. . .] global public goods.
OpenG2P, which provides “government-to-person (G2P) solutions,” enables governments to provide digital “onboarding into schemes, identity verification, and cash transfers to their [the public’s] bank accounts.” According to the UN, OpenG2P is a digital public good.
Any organisation that professes to have the alleged right to exercise “stewardship” over something is claiming to define “the way in which they control or take care of it.”
Needless to say OpenG2P is World Bank ID4D and ID2020 standard compliant. This is just one “global public good” over which the regime intends to “strengthen” its global governance.
The WEF and the Rockefeller Foundation have partnered on the Commons Project. The claimed objective is:
Unlocking the full potential of technology and data for the common good.
Their stated mission is to “improve lives by empowering people to access, manage and share their data” by “supporting open data standards that promote interoperability”, “developing global ecosystems to convene public and private partners”; and “building technology platforms and services that empower individuals with their own data.” The Commons Project was notably behind CommonPass, a WEF-backed vaccine passport framework, as well as the Vaccine Credential Initiative (VCI), which sought to create the standards for interoperability among vaccine passports globally.
As reported by Unlimited Hangout in 2021:
[The Commons Project co-founders] Paul Meyer and Bradley Perkins, have long-standing ties to the RAND Corporation, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the International Rescue Committee, as noted in this article published last year by MintPress News. The IRC, currently run by Tony Blair protégé David Milliband, is developing a biometric ID and vaccination-record system for refugees in Myanmar in cooperation with the ID2020 Alliance, which is partnered with CommonPass backer, the Rockefeller Foundation. In addition, the ID2020 Alliance funds the Commons Project Foundation and is also backed by Microsoft, one of the key companies behind the VCI.
Having established the concept of exercising its governance over “global public goods,” the regime has moved on to flesh out the necessary policy platforms to convert its claimed authority into national government policy, regulation and legislation.
Everything related to global health care, including all of our health data, all information [on any subject] both online and off, all global economic activity, all trade and finance; the internet and all digital infrastructure, digital services, all data and “more.” The regime and its G3P regime claims both the authority and the ability to govern it all.
The regime states that 41 of the 92 SDG indicators cannot be met unless a system of “interoperable data and standardised reporting” is introduced. Therefore, they must fabricate the alleged geopolitical demand for said interoperable data and digital ID to meet the also fabricated “Identity gap.” Interoperable data solutions, especially digital ID, are essential if the regime is going to successfully exploit sustainable development to seize all global public goods and cement its claimed authority over it all.
As reported by Dr Jacob Nordangård, the commitment to “Our Common Agenda” gave rise to a number of policy briefs which governments around the world will “enable” and translate into hard national policy that controls all of us. Among the policy briefs sits the regime’s Policy brief No 5: A Global Digital Compact.
This blankly states, without any apparent justification or even identifiable rationale:
Digital technologies today are similar to natural resources such as air and water. Our well-being and development depend on their global availability.
Highlighting global inequality in the distribution and relative access costs of digital technology, the Digital Compact’s stated objective is “to overcome digital, data and innovation divides and to achieve the governance required for a sustainable digital future.” The deceptive moral “sustainable” case is made, ensuring most accept the proffered justification. The associated policy implications portend something far less edifying.
In A Global Digital Compact, the UN claims:
Urgent investments are needed in “data commons”, which pool data and digital infrastructure across borders, build flagship data sets and standards for interoperability and bring together data and AI expertise from public and private institutions to build insights and applications for the Sustainable Development Goals.
The regime and its partners have created the commensurate “mutlistakeholder” initiatives, the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) “where all recognised digital public goods can be discovered.” The DPGA brings together the usual foundations, such as the BMGF, the Rockefellers and the Omidyar Network, and other public and private “stakeholders.”
The DPGA has already registered a number of digital products which are, it says, essential for sustainable development. Apparently, 73 such products are necessary for SDG3 to transform global public health and health care; 25 digital public goods are needed in order for SDG2 to eradicate global hunger, 37 interoperable digital applications are allegedly essential for SDG4 to transform education and so on.
The DPGA claims that all registered Digital Public Goods (DPGs) must adhere to the DPG standards it decrees, along with its own set of “indicators.” This supposedly means that digital products that “store and distribute personally identifiable data, must demonstrate how they ensure the privacy, security and integrity of this data.”
The vendor must show, to the DPGA’s satisfaction, how it removes PII (personally identifiable information). How the DPGA can make this claim is a mystery as the global governance regime clearly intends to collect PII as outlined in A Global Digital Compact:
Personal data should only be collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes, and their processing must be relevant and limited to what is necessary for those purposes.
The regime will specify the “legitimate purposes” for the “collected” PII. We already know that some of those purposes include ensuring our health data is “bound to an individual identity.” ID2020 founders Accenture are among the digital ID vendors whose blockchains and biometrics will support their corporate clients to “map physical IDs to digital IDs.” Presumably, this too is “legitimate.”
Other legitimate purposes include the surveillance of every transaction we make. It is clear that the intention is to link our digital IDs to our finances. The Global Digital Compact adds:
Digital IDs linked with bank or mobile money accounts can improve the delivery of social protection coverage and serve to better reach eligible beneficiaries. [. . .] Digital public goods and applications such as mobile money are enabling access to financial and other services for all members of societies.
The regime maintains that this is “legitimate” because it establishes the framework for another of its deceptively named ideas: financial inclusion.
Digital ID and “Financial Inclusion“
The regime’s concept of “financial inclusion,” as highlighted in its Global Digital Compact, will see our digital IDs linked to our “bank or mobile money accounts.”
This will not only enable the regime to take our money whenever it likes, for whatever purpose it wishes, but also to surveil and control all of our transactions and effectively operate a global system of economic punishment and reward. SDG16.9 is thus the keystone for a global dictatorship.
The UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA), in partnership with the G20, has identified fixing the lack of financial inclusion as “imperative” for meeting SDGs:
G20 leaders recognized financial inclusion as a cross-cutting issue for development and economic system stability and included it in work plans. Additionally, financial inclusion is referenced in the targets of eight of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). [. . .] An important step on the global level was to convene financial standard-setting bodies (SSBs) at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in Basel to include financial inclusion in their work.
UNSGSA is led by Queen Máxima of the Netherlands who, as a former economist for Deutsche Bank and institutional sales director for HSBC—among her numerous roles with other global financial institutions—is working with the WEF, the World Bank and the BIS to unlock the estimated $2 trillion in investment required to achieve said “financial inclusion.”
India—and China—are of particular interest in this regard. In its most recent (financial inclusion index) Findex Report, speaking about the need to create the $2 trillion “enabling environment,” the President of the World Bank, David Malpas, said:
The lack of verifiable identity is one of the main reasons why adults remain excluded from financial services. India has pioneered a successful model for universal identity[.] [. . .] The interoperability of systems and the availability of a low-cost switch for financial transactions are equally important.
The UN offers an explanation, suggesting why its focus upon “financial inclusion” supposedly matters:
According to the 2021 World Bank Global Findex. [. . .] Financial inclusion [. . .] has a critical role in the efforts to help people prepare for, respond to and recover from crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, or economic and climate shocks. [. . .] An inclusive financial system is essential infrastructure in every country.
Once again we see that crises provide opportunities. As stated here, a variety of crises, new and old, will be used to push for “financial inclusion.”
The UN Task Force for the digital financing of SDGs explored how to “catalyse and recommend ways to harness digital financing to accelerate the financing of the Sustainable Development Goals.” It published a “call to action” with the objective of exploiting “digitalization in creating a citizen-centric financial system aligned to the SDGs.”
The UN Task Force’s “action agenda” recommended “a new generation of global digital financing platforms with significant cross-border, spillover impacts.” According to the regime, this would, of course, require the strengthening of “inclusive international governance.”
Cross-border spillovers, or “externalities,” are the actions and events occurring in one country that have intended or unintended consequences in others. An article published by the private World Privacy Forum, the BMGF and the Rockefeller-backed Centre for Global Development, after noting that COVID-19 accelerated the path towards digitalisation, claimed that governments are “still in the early stages of deciding how they want to govern digital spaces.” Apparently, the only possible solution is, as the UN Task Force claims, tighter global governance.
It is claimed that cross-border spillover could be managed by including “digital ID and data markets” in a system of “SDG-aligned digital financing.” Supposedly, this will enable people to exercise their [human] “rights” while protecting national economies and data markets from spillover impacts.
Such [human] “rights” include the “right” to have a digital ID attached to an individual from birth in order to ensure that any “money” allocated to any individual can be used by the G3P to finance whatever it wants to finance.
The Task Force concluded that the “catalytic opportunities” to finance SDGs would necessitate “accelerating the use of domestic savings” and controlling “SDG-aligned consumer spending.” The proposed “citizen-centric financial system” provides the G3P regime access to domestic savings and the power to supervise consumer spending.
To this end, in 2020, the UN Task Force published a document it deceptively titled “Peoples’ Money – Harnessing Digitilisation to Finance A Sustainable Future. The most striking thing about “Peoples’ Money” is that the global governance regime assumes that all of the peoples’ money belongs to it:
The aggregate global pool of domestic savings has grown over the last 20 years from US$7.5 trillion to US$23.3 trillion. Domestic savings in least developed countries alone has grown from US$13 to US$218 billion over the same period. Digitalization allows micro-savings from the informal sector to become part of the formal financial system and gives those already using the financial system more options. This raises the possibility of increasing the proportion of long-term development financing needs being met from domestic resources.
The Financial Times offers a reasonable definition of “domestic savings”:
Gross Domestic Saving consists of savings of household sector, private corporate sector and public sector.
As we will discuss in a moment, none of us have the right to not to be included in this digital ID based financial system. It is assumed that all of us agree that “our” money should be used to finance the UN regime’s SDGs.
The long-term development of financing for SDGs can come directly from “our” bank accounts in the digitalized “ecosystem.” This is another notable aspect of the UN regime’s “citizen-centric financial system.”
“Peoples’ Money” recommended that the UN and its partners should use “the forces of digitalization” to accelerate SDG-aligned, citizen-centric financing:
Digital identity systems are particularly important for people to be able to operate in this world. [. . .] Robust, accessible, affordable and secure digital foundations are a pre-requisite to citizen-centric, SDG-aligned finance. This includes the core digital connectivity and payments infrastructure, digital IDs, and data markets that enable financial innovation and low-cost service delivery. [. . .] Universally-available, reliable, secure, private, unique digital IDs are critical to enabling people to access digital finance.
“Financial inclusion” renders our access to money and finance subject to conditions set at the global governance level. It converts us all into “cash cows” on a global financial farm.
While we may still be able to access funds—if we have an approved digital ID—we won’t control our own money. The money we can “access” can be expropriated for SDG investment and keeping our money elsewhere will become more difficult as “the informal sector” becomes “part of the formal financial system” through the imposition of these systems globally. Digital ID “linked with bank or mobile money accounts” is the key to unlock the “informal sector” vault.
SDG16.9 digital ID is essential for the new SDG-aligned financial system to thrive. Imposing a global system of of digital identity for all eight billion of us is a mammoth task. The Task Force reiterated the only practical, technological solution:
Open source projects and shared standards allow interoperability and open innovation rather than tying companies into proprietary technology and locking data into incompatible formats.
Controlling All Business Through Digital ID
Financial inclusion extends beyond the individual to all of our businesses. The regime claims the “right” to “steward” all of those assets too.
In 2021, Manjeet Kripalani, the Executive Director of Gateway House (Indian Council on Global Relations), the Indian policy think-tank arm of the US Council on Foreign Relations, wrote:
Digitalisation will power the developing world out of economic crisis with MSMEs [Micro-, Small and Medium Enterprises] as a necessary enabler.
The regime considers MSMEs—i.e. our businesses—to be crucial to achieving a number of SDGs. Consequently, the regime claims the authority to govern our businesses. This will enable it to lead the “structural transformation that provide[s] a regulatory framework conducive to their [MSMEs] growth.”
Three hundred of the world’s largest financial institutions agree and have recognised how digital ID could help MSMEs unlock “trade finance.” Trade financing is a credit product that global corporations offer to “help traders manage their international payments and associated risks.”
This is all supposedly necessary because a series of crises have stifled MSMEs’ access to financing, they claim. The irresponsible lending policies of the financial institutions had nothing to do with it apparently.
In order to help MSMEs, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) suggests that “improved automation of corporate digital identity (DID), combined with technologies to digitise trade documents and to process alternative credit data, offer promising solutions.”
The BIS adds:
In the context of trade finance, DIDs [Decentralised Identifiers] also need to be harmonised across borders, highlighting the need for common standards. Once achieved, corporate DIDs can integrate with other trade tech solutions [. . .]. For example, combining faster and more well rounded credit assessments with the use of alternative data and trade document digitisation can speed up and enhance credit extension to SMEs [small to medium size enterprises].
DIDs are “Decentralised Identifiers.” They can be assigned to corporations, small businesses and individuals. We’ll cover this in more detail shortly.
While it is heartening to know that the largest and most powerful financial institutions on Earth are eager to help our small businesses, obviously we’ll only get that “help” if our businesses have the right digital ID [DIDs]. We might also wonder if a single, global system controlling all business investment and finance is likely to benefit our cafés, small industrial contractors, craft workshops, hair salons and other MSMEs.
Digital ID for MSMEs is part of the regime’s “citizen-centric financial system.” Although it appears to be far more multinational financial corporation “centric” than “citizen-centric.”
In the Digital Compact, the UN states that it wants to established a “global commission” to oversee the transition to interoperable, digital ID-based digitalisation. It also notes:
Digital technologies are accelerating the concentration of economic power in an ever smaller group of elites and companies: the combined wealth of technology billionaires, $2.1 trillion in 2022, is greater than the annual gross domestic product of more than half of the Group of 20 economies. [. . .] The present policy brief builds upon the foundation laid by the report of the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation.
Crises, such as the pseudopandemic, always tend to significantly increase the wealth of the so-called “elite.” The most recent wealth transfer to tech billionaires transpired as a result of the digitalisation that blossomed during the pseudopandemic.
As pointed out by independent journalist and documentary filmmaker James Corbett, it is therefore preposterous that the “Digital Compact” is based upon the work of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation which is led by ultra-wealthy figures like Melinda Gates, Co-Chair of the BMGF, and Jack Ma, Executive Chairman of the Alibaba Group.
James Corbett observed:
Digitisation [digitalisation] has meant the creation of this incredible billionaire super-class that is now having more and more power over greater and greater sections of our lives as everything becomes digitised. So what is the UN’s answer to this? [. . .] Who are they entrusting to solve the problem they have created? It’s the people who created the problem. It is absolute insanity.
It certainly appears insane, but only if you think sustainable development has anything to do with prioritising “the essential needs of the world’s poor.” If you understand, as James Corbett does and has been reporting for many years, that sustainable development is about enhancing and centralising global power, then, the fact that people like Gates and Ma are guiding policy development makes perfect sense.
Digital ID Whether You Want It Or Not
In Mario Puzo’s novel, The Godfather, the character Don Vito Corleone says “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.” SD16.9 digital ID is being “offered” to every person on the planet using the same, fabled gangster’s ploy of a “choice” between agreement or dire consequences. Or, at least, that is the apparent nature of the coercion.
The regime reports that 2023 is likely to be the year that India overtakes China as the world’s most populous country. The global governance regime and its partners made significant strides towards coercing all Indian people to use its ID2020 compliant, interoperable digital ID by supporting the development of the Aadhaar system in India.
The regime’s ID2020 founding partners, such as the Rockefeller Foundation, have been deeply involved with development of the Aadhaar program in India:
With the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, ID2020 partnered with IDinsight to identify metrics which would capture feasible, actionable and generalizable data on digital identity programs. [. . .] The State of Aadhaar initiative, hosted by IDinsight, aims to catalyze data-driven discourse and decision-making in the Aadhaar ecosystem.
The objective was to ensure that the Aadhaar “ecosystem” met ID2020 and ID4D standards and interoperable “functional requirements.”
The Aadhaar 12 digit ID registration number has been adopted by an estimated 90% of India’s 1.4 billion people. This is managed under the statutory authority of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) by virtue of the Aadhar Act of 2016.
The UIDAI founding chairman is the Indian multi-billionaire Nandan Nilekani. He is both a close friend of Bill Gates and a member of ID4D High Level Advisory Council which provides “strategic guidance to the ID4D Initiative.”
The BMGF, an ID2020 co-founder, has been equally supportive of Aadhaar. The BMGF—also a leading UN partner—is ostensibly very concerned about “financial inclusion.” Consequently, the BMGF, has established its Financial Services for the Poor project:
Our team is actively exploring ways to accelerate use of digital financial services. [. . .] We also are working to promote the development of effective identification systems in priority geographies. ID platforms such as the Aadhaar system in India are promising models for providing safe, efficient, and widely beneficial identification services that support financial inclusion across a country.
According to the UN and the BMGF, with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Aadhaar Digital biometric ID system, once linked to an “inclusive financial system,” will be “essential” for all Indian people.
The UIDAI explains the Aadhaar registration process:
The process for Aadhaar enrolment of resident of the country involves use of certain basic demographic information combined with ten finger prints, both irises and photograph to uniquely identify a resident.
The biometric data, mapped to “a person’s physical ID,” will be available to vendors who have “approved” access to the data. The plan is to “decentralise” access to the inevitable global database, through MOSIP or similar “trust frameworks,” thus supposedly improving data protection.
Nearly 1.3 billion people in India have every aspect of their identity, from name and address to identifying biometric data, stored on a single, centralised database: the Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR).
The UIDAI claims that applying for an Aadhaar card or using the mAadhaar app is voluntary. This is only true in Don Corleone sense.
The Aadhaar card enables Indians to access much needed subsidies, benefits and services. This was always the intention of the UIDAI, pursuant to the 2016 Act.
Other forms of ID are available, but the UIDAI has now stated that either an active or proof of a pending Aadhaar Enrolment Identification (EID) number will be needed to claim state benefits.
The Permanent Account Number (PAN) card is what enables Indians to pay their taxes. They face an automatic fine of Rs. 1000—additional fines levied on-top as deemed necessary—if they fail to do so. The PAN also facilitates the purchase and sale of vehicles, the opening of all but the most basic bank accounts, credit card applications, bank payments and transfers of Rs. 50,000 ($600 USD) or more, etc.
The Indian Government decreed that all PAN cards were to be linked to an Aadhaar system buy June 30th 2023. PAN cards have now been phased out. Those who missed the deadline can pay a penalty to link their EID retrospectively but, if they can’t afford the penalty or don’t know what to do, according to Microsoft, that’s just too bad.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) is trialling the linking of Aadhaar digital ID to voter registration. This will not become “mandatory” it claims.
It is, therefore, no wonder that Aadhaar uptake is so high. Providing you don’t need and will never need any state benefits or subsidies, and as long as you don’t run a business or are required by Indian law to pay tax; if you don’t have or ever want any credit and don’t wish or need to access a bank account; if you never buy or sell a car and don’t ever spend more than the equivalent of $600 USD and, in all probability, never wish to vote, then your Indian biometric digital ID is entirely “voluntary,” in theory.
India is a vast country. In reality, Aadhaar is not and has never been “voluntary” for the majority of Indians.
In Kerela, the voluntary Aadhaar link to voter registration operates on an opt-out basis, but residents are not routinely made aware of this. The Tamil Nadu state government, legislating nearly 84 million people, has issued a series of orders mandating Aadhaar for access to state benefits and subsidies.
Notably, Aadhaar has been plagued with technical errors and data breeches. In its 2019 Global Risks Report, the WEF reported:
The government ID database, Aadhaar [CIDR], reportedly suffered multiple breaches that potentially compromised the records of all 1.1 billion registered citizens. It was reported in January that criminals were selling access to the database at a rate of 500 rupees for 10 minutes, while in March [2018] a leak at a state-owned utility company allowed anyone to download names and ID numbers.
In 2018 and in response to persistent allegations of CIDR vulnerabilities, R.S. Sharma, Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), in an effort to demonstrate that these were all “conspiracy theories,” published his Aadhaar number on Twitter to prove the system was secure. Within hours, interested parties had released his mobile number(s), Gmail and Yahoo addresses, physical address, date of birth, frequent flyer number, personal photographs and bank account details to which, for comedic effect, they sent some small payments.
Older people, whose fingerprints have degenerated, have been excluded from accessing vital food subsidies due to the flaws in Aadhaar’s biometric component. In 2015, a study revealed that of 85,589 ration card holders—accessed via Aadhaar—50,151 people in Andhra Pradesh could not access the grain subsides provided through 125 fair price shops across the state.
Eight years later, there is little evidence that the problem of “exclusion” has been resolved by this system. Indian states operate various “vetting” procedures as a prerequisite to issuing Aadhaar ID. Vetting has been used to discriminate against disadvantaged populations. For example, Adivasi people, who often do not possess birth certificates, have been excluded from financial benefits and food relief, as they have been blocked via the vetting procedures and can’t obtain an Aadhaar EIN.
The Aadhaar system has also frequently encouraged, rather than deterred, widespread corruption. In Jharkhand, grain dealers used Aadhaar to record the allocation of grain quotas but halved the amount supplied to aid recipients, selling the remainder for illegal profit.
The SDG16.9.1 indicator aims to measure the “proportion of children under 5 years” who have digital ID. It is no coincidence that the Nilekani’s UIDAI seeks to capture “biometric identity for minor children below five years.”
It is the poor who are worst affected by alleged registration and vetting “errors.” Tens of millions of impoverished Indian children are at risk of exclusion from school and essential food subsidies.
Once again, we are confronted with the stark contrast between the stated aim of sustainable development—-to give priority to “the essential needs of the world’s poor”—and the reality. So frequent is this disconnect that it is reasonable to conclude that empowering the world’s poor is not the intention at all.
The regime is so impressed with its Aadhaar system that its ID4D agent, the World Bank, is working with the UIDAI to export the Aadhaar model globally to create a “Universal Global Identity System.” While this appears to be extremely bad news for the world’s poor, Saurabh Garg, chief executive of UIDAI, said:
The Universal Global Identity System is something we are very actively working upon. [. . .] [S]ome countries have already adopted the kind of architecture that we have used and others are keen to do that.
By July 2022, the IIIT-B MOSIP development platform had been used by digital ID vendors to supply interoperable Aadhaar-like ID products and services in Sri Lanka, Morocco, the Philippines, Guinea, Ethiopia and the Togolese Republic. By April 2023, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso had also adopted MOSIP interoperable digital ID.
We can only hope that this will do something to tackle the disastrous impact that SDG16.9 has already wrought on countries like Uganda. Unfortunately, there is no reason to think that it will.
Known in Uganda as “Ndaga Muntu,” and widely recognised as a national security “weapon,” the Ugandan National ID Card (NIC) is needed for everything from accessing healthcare, food aid and financial support, to applying for licences and opening bank accounts.
In 2021, the Ugandan human rights watchdog “Unwanted Witness” published its report on digital “exclusion” entitled “Chased Away and Left To Die.” Unwanted Witness academics recorded a litany of abuses and cruel exclusions that had been facilitated by Ugandan digital ID.
Ugandans had to bribe officials to gain the necessary “sanctioned” signatures for their digital ID applications. Non-indigenous Ugandans, such as the Maragoli people, were routinely excluded from accessing digital ID. Older and disabled people with difficulty accessing remote registration centres and often with degraded biometric features, such as irises and fingerprints, were also systematically “excluded.”
With an estimated 23% -33% of Ugandan adults excluded from digital ID registration, many resorted to unorthodox means to access vital services. Forgery, submitting false names, posing as others already registered and bribing officials were common tactics.
Much of this was “illegal,” running the risk of punishment and arrest, but unavoidable for millions of Ugandans. A woman in the Ugandan district of Amudat told the researchers:
Without an ID or clinic card for women who have been receiving antenatal care, [you will receive] no treatment. Many people fall sick and stay home and die.
These problems were compounded by high error rates in the registration and data handling processes. 50,000 of 197,000 Ugandans over the age of 80 could not collect their Senior Citizens Grants [UK and Irish-supported state pensions] as a result.
The Ugandans that were able to register for digital ID were also placed at risk. Following anti-government protests in 2020, the Ugandan police used registered biometric facial recognition from the NIC database to identify protesters and arrested more than 830 of them.
The offer no one can refuse has already been made to billions of people in developing and emerging economies and is beginning to be rolled-out in developed economies, such as Russia, the UK, US, the EU and elsewhere.
The World Bank’s most recent Findex Report noted:
Global efforts to increase inclusive access to trusted identification systems and mobile phones could be leveraged to increase account ownership for hard-to-reach populations.
This “leveraging” is particularly important to coerce the people who neither want a bank account nor the digital ID that goes with it: the so-called “unbanked.”
The World Bank’s report adds:
Distrust of the financial system is a greater barrier in some regions, and globally it was cited by 23 percent of unbanked adults. In Europe and Central Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean, about a third of unbanked adults said they do not have an account because they distrust the banking system. In Ukraine, 54 percent of unbanked adults listed distrust in the financial system as one of the reasons for their lack of an account. More than one in three unbanked adults cited the same barrier in Argentina, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Jamaica, and Russia, among others.
It seems these “unbanked” people do not have the “human right” to decline a bank account or reject the imposition of digital ID. Yet, they are all currently surviving without either. The fact that so many people currently live without them, shows us that this “offer” is essentially a confidence trick.
While the “choice” to refuse digital ID won’t be easy, it can still be done, including in developed nations. It is certainly time for us all to start considering our options very carefully, because SDG16.9 digital ID is taking us all to a very dark place.
Digital ID-Based Central Bank Digital Currencies & Financial Inclusion
The SDG-aligned, “citizen-centric” financial system will almost certainly be based upon interoperable Central Bank Digital Currency. CBDC, linked to digital ID, enables the necessary allocation and control of our “money.” If the plan succeeds, all money will be a direct liability of the central banks. Such “money” will always “belong” to central banks, never to us.
This explains why the Bank for International Settlements (BIS)—the central bank of central banks—claims that CBDC could be an effective tool for financial inclusion.
A digital platform that enables a public-private partnership of “vendors” to integrate their products and services to a centrally controlled “portal,” has emerged as the foremost model for the “global digital transformation.” The “platform model” is preferred by governments around the world for a range of digital ID-based “services.”
According to the NATO-aligned Atlantic Council’s CBDC Tracker, “130 countries, representing over 95 percent of global GDP, are exploring a CBDC.” Of these, 11 have launched a full national CBDC. Of the 11, Nigeria, with a population of more than 220 million people, is by far the largest.
Access to Nigeria’s e-Naira is dependent upon possession of a National Identification Number (NIN) authorised by the National Identity Management System (NIMS) programme. The most significant national CBDC launched to date requires Nigerians to use digital ID. Their “human rights” do not extend to maintaining anonymous financial transactions.
The Bank for International Settlements states:
Universal access to eNaira is a key goal of the CBN [Central Bank of Nigeria], and new forms of digital identification are being issued to the unbanked to help with access. [. . .] When it comes to anonymity, the CBN has opted to not allow anonymity even for lower-tier wallets. At present, a bank verification number is required to open a retail customer wallet.
Nigerian’s NINs compel them to share all their biometric data with the government and its commercial partners. By linking this to the e-Naira, Nigerians’ transactions can be surveilled and tracked and, more importantly from the global governance regime’s perspective, controlled.
The CBN launched the e-Naira in November 2021. In December 2021, the ID4D partnership began its Nigeria Digital Identification for Development (ID4D) project. Similarly, in China, digital ID is required to use the e-CNY—China’s CBDC.
CBDC and digital ID are synonymous. This was always the intention. In its 2021 Annual Economic Report, the BIS wrote:
[T]he most promising design is an account-based CBDC, rooted in an efficient digital identity scheme for users. In this way, CBDCs can meet the challenges raised by the huge volume of personal data collected as an input into business activity. [. . .] CBDCs are best designed as part of a two-tier system where the central bank and the private sector focus on what they do best: the central bank on operating the core of the system by ensuring sound money, liquidity and overall security; the private sector by innovating and using its creativity and ingenuity to serve customers better.
As will be detailed shortly, the “two-tier” system is designed with deception in mind. It means that we can be tricked into using both CBDC and the prerequisite digital ID without our knowledge. Not only will we have been ensnared in the regime’s “citizen-centric financial system,” we will also be registered on the “Universal Global Identity System” without ever consciously giving our consent.
In addition, CBDC is “programmable money.” This means that digital “smart contracts” can be linked to individual transactions, thus enabling policy enforcement.
Bo Li, the former Deputy Governor of the PBC, and the current Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), speaking at the Central Bank Digital Currencies for Financial Inclusion: Risks and Rewards symposium, explained the power that programmable CBDC “financial inclusion” affords the G3P regime:
CBDC can improve financial inclusion through, what we call, programmability. That is, CBDC can allow government agencies and private sector players to program [CBDC] to create smart-contracts, to allow targeted policy functions. For example[,] welfare payments [. . .], consumptions coupons, [. . .] food stamps. By programming, CBDC money can be precisely targeted [to] what kind of [things] people can own, and what kind of use [for which] this money can be utilised. For example, [. . .] for food.
Policies will be enforced by a global public-private partnership. These policies can be implemented at the point of sale, removing the need for legislation or any democratic process. Access to food, water, energy, or money can be controlled by the G3P regime.
15 minute cities can be established and enforced by disabling a user’s CBDC beyond a 15 minute radius from their homes. The use of Electric Vehicles (EVs) can be compelled by disabling the CBDC purchase of any petrol or diesel vehicle or by denying the buying of tickets for non-EV public transport. All business activity, investment and financial services can be controlled. Interoperable CBDCs, supposedly designed to meet the SDG16.9 financial inclusion, is feudalism at best but can also be considered global slavery.
The UK government is one of the leading financial backers of the World Bank’s ID4D global digital ID “data set.” It is also a keen advocate of CBDC. So it is not at all surprising to see the UK state broadcaster, the BBC, provide the appropriate e-Naira guidance in Pidgin.
The Nigerian state is trying to force its population to use its digital ID-based CBDC. The CBN has strangled the supply of cash, leaving Nigerian bank customers unable to acquire the physical money they need. This has resulted in numerous protests, as Nigerians resist the imposition of CBDC.
The Nigerian people are not falling for the coercive tactics of the central bank and the government. They are turning instead to other forms of payment and are demanding renewed access to cash. So far, the roll-out of the e-Naira has been a total flop.
The unpopularity of CBDC has coincided with a significant increase in the use of cryptocurrency in Nigeria. The Nigerian Government response is as expected. It continues to try to regulate cryptocurrency, but with little success. It seems Nigerians don’t want “financial inclusion.”
The Indian government has been far more aggressive in preparation for the imposition of CBDC in the form of the e-rupee. In 2016, it began the process of “demonetisation,” removing 86% of Indian cash overnight. This forced Indians to use electronic banking, priming them for their impending CBDC.
Nonetheless, the e-rupee is not popular in India either. Just as in Nigeria and China, the people wisely view CBDC with immense suspicion. Unfortunately, the global public-private partnership (G3P) regime isn’t interested in our opinions or wishes.
Apparently demonstrating unbelievable naivéte, when Cornell University researchers investigated why the e-Naira had failed, they noted:
Unfortunately, the anti-laundering measures [ALM] built into the eNaira can be seen by users as a breach of privacy, with the government able to monitor all your money and potentially use that information for control. [. . .] The eNaira seems to have been created to preserve as much government power as possible. Nodes are run in private, and no transaction details are shared with the public, so usage statistics remain visible to the CBN only. The strict authentication measures make government tracking incredibly viable, while not really giving any real accountability to the government.
The scholars seemingly thought this was a design flaw. However, it was not a mistake. As the BIS pointed out, that is how CBDC is intended to function. It is the CBDC “model.”
Pedro Magalhães, a Brazilian software engineer and blockchain developer, reverse-engineered the published code for the Brazilian CBDC. He discovered that it could adjust account balances, make payments and generate or eliminate “digital tokens” without user permission.
In addition to “financial inclusion,” another alleged benefit of CBDC is “financial stability.” The threat of another global financial crisis has been sign-posted by the regime on innumerable occasions. CBDC may well be offered to all as the “global solution” to the next “global financial crisis.”
If the central banks that seek to promulgate CBDC continue with their apparently reckless and groundless monetary policies, a global financial crisis is all but inevitable. Once again, policy, not random events, will be the driver. Perhaps central bank monetary policy is not as “reckless and groundless” as some imagine.
CBDC is the ultimate “tool” to control the citizen-centric financial system. Digital ID will be required for anyone to access CBDC. Digital ID is clearly the “pre-requisite to citizen-centric, SDG-aligned finance.”
Biometric Digital ID Via Two-Tiered Platforms
Digital ID is perhaps the most crucial technological component of the regime’s sustainable development agenda. Nearly all nation-states have committed to fulfilling SDG ambitions, including the widespread adoption of biometric digital ID.
Simultaneously, “financial inclusion,” the fluffy-sounding regime term for financial control, is a core component of SDG financing. Ubiquitous use of biometric digital ID is synonymous with our planned future access to “money.” What better way to get everyone to “onboard” onto the new system than to exclude them from the essential financial and banking services if they do not participate.
The problem the G3P regime faces is that the availability of potential alternatives—whatever maintains the possibility for anonymous transactions, such as cash, local exchange trading systems (LETS) and some cryptocurrencies—can be used by people who decline the offered tyranny. This point is exemplified by the Nigerian peoples’ reaction to the eNaira.
The rollout of CBDCs and the prerequisite digital ID has so far been a disaster for the regime. Regardless of the culture, people in India, China and elsewhere have shown a distinct lack of enthusiasm for embracing their planned digital future. In fact, they are actively resisting in many instances.
It now seems clear that, absent some destructive financial event—a financial Pearl Harbour that would potentially enable the G3P to offer CBDC as the only possible “solution”—the G3P regime can’t impose its digital ID products and services nor achieve digital “financial inclusion” purely by coercion or force.
Consequently, the G3P is evidently willing to use subterfuge. The adoption of the “two-tiered” model of CBDC facilitates their deception.
There are many different technical models proposed for central bank digital currencies (CBDC). Broadly speaking, though, CBDC is either “wholesale” or “retail.”
Wholesale CBDC acts like central bank reserves. It is available for use only by commercial banks, financial institutions and central banks. They use wholesale CBDC to settle payments between each other, but it is not accessible to the general public.
Retail CBDC, on the other hand, is offered to the public. It is promoted as an “alternative” to both cash and the electronic payment systems we commonly use, which can also be considered fiat currency—“cash”—transactions.
With the launch of the e-CNY, the eNaira, the e-Rupee, the digital pound and the digital ruble, the “hybrid” or “two-tiered” model has emerged as the preferred CBDC “platform.” This model of CBDC is issued by the central bank via an application programming interface (API). Private financial institutions and firms can then access the API and use CBDC for wholesale settlements.
The two-tier model also allows private commercial banks and payment “solution” providers—Mastercard, Meta, PayPal or WeChat Pay, for example—to “innovate” and construct financial products and services on the API “layer.” All of these banks and providers are effectively offering the public “retail” CBDC transactions on a single “two-tiered” infrastructure that also enables “wholesale” settlements.
The BoE’s digital pound technical specification explains how the two-tiered CBDC model will function. Private financial institutions and payment providers, which the BoE calls PIPs and ESIPs respectively, will be given the power to program the digital pound via, for instance, the smart contracts favoured by Bo Li and others.
The BoE states:
The [two-tier] platform model is currently the preferred model for offering a UK CBDC. [. . .] The Bank hosts the core ledger and an application programming interface (API) layer. The API layer would allow private sector firms, known as Payment Interface Providers (PIPs) and External Service Interface Providers (ESIPs), access to the core ledger functionality in order to provide user services. Access to the core ledger would be subject to approval by the Bank [. . .] and subject to PIPs and ESIPs having appropriate regulatory status.
The two-tiered CBDC model incorporates all the functionality of other CBDC systems, such as instant cross-border settlement and programmability, but provides the possibility that the public could be lulled into using a CBDC without necessarily knowing that it is one as they would not directly interact with the CBDC’s API. The same can be said for the accompanying biometric digital ID.
The underlying currency will be CBDC but, as the BoE points out, the products and services that use CBDC could take many different forms, anything from stablecoins to non-fungible tokens (NFTs):
[The] ledger records updates to the state and ownership of tokens or the destruction and creation of unique tokens. [. . .] Technologies for a CBDC are also relevant to privately issued digital money, like stablecoins. [. . .] PIPs could implement some [. . .] features, such as automated payments and programmable wallets, by hosting the programmable logic, and updating the core ledger with the result via the API. But other features, such as payment-versus-payment (PvP) [. . .] and smart contracts, might require additional design considerations. In those instances, the Bank [BoE] would only provide the necessary infrastructure to support PIPs and ESIPs to provide these functionalities. [. . .] PvP functionality might be used to enable interoperability and exchange between a CBDC and other forms of money, such as stablecoins.
It is worth reiterating that while the two-tier model allows commercial banks and others to develop all manner of digital payment products and services, the underlying currency for the settlement of all payments, both wholesale and retail, is CBDC. While the BoE claims that it doesn’t “currently” intend to program CBDC directly, preferring to leave this to PIPs and ESIPs for the time being, it stressed that the base “CBDC must deliver the government and Bank’s [BoE] policy objectives.”
For private financial corporations to maintain access to the CBDC “infrastructure,” they “must deliver” G3P policy objectives, such as SDG “financial inclusion.” The BoE will control the “core ledger” and the PIP and ESIP license approval process. While the “two-tier” model appears to be “decentralised,” or “vendor agnostic,” it is actually a stringent, programmable, “centralised” financial control system.
The BoE acknowledges that it is wary of public resistance to its authoritarian control. With regard to the programmability—business logic—of CBDC, it states that “hosting business logic also creates a number of reputational risks and potential conflicts.” Consequently, central banks claim that their private vendor partners will manage “business logic.”
Regardless of what platform compliant coins or tokens the public chooses, we will not be able to access them “anonymously.” Consequently, the BoE, in this instance, claims it has farmed out issuance of the necessary, corresponding digital ID to the private sector:
Users would need to be authenticated to carry out CBDC transactions. PIPs would be responsible for authenticating users. This is the Bank’s preferred approach to user authentication as it allocates the responsibility for onboarding [getting you to use CBDC], AML [anti-money laundering] and KYC [know your customer] checks to PIPs, and does not require the Bank [BoE] to store personal data. PIPs would likely need to comply with strong customer authentication (SCA) requirements. This means that users might have to authenticate two or more elements categorised as: knowledge (something you know) — a personal identification number (PIN) or password validated either locally on the device or online; possession (something you have) — in most cases, this would be either the smart device or the smart card; and inherence (something you are) — biometric authentication, such as facial or fingerprint recognition.
But the BoE then contradicts itself:
The Bank may need to collect operational metadata for analysis of system status and performance. This would allow the Bank to maintain the core ledger and the API layer. The Bank could also collect aggregate data, subject to effective anonymisation and privacy protections, in order to undertake economic and policy analysis.
The BoE is intent on harvesting all transaction data, including users’ biometric digital IDs from its “private” partners, while also claiming that it isn’t. This same deception is common to all two-tier models.
The public will only have access to their CBDC-related products and services, i.e., “money”—via PIPs and the ESIPs in the UK—in exchange for their “biometric authentication.” Where the alleged “anonymisation and privacy protections” fit in to the UK’s proposed two-tier model is impossible to determine.
The BoE says that “any information accessed by the Bank [BoE] would have to be effectively anonymised off-ledger.” This is because the “on-ledger” CBDC system it has designed doesn’t leave room for any “anonymisation.”
The BoE claims the “off-ledger” privacy protection will supposedly follow data privacy guidelines stipulated by the UK Information Commissioners Office (ICO). However, the only ICO document it cites merely describes basic data protection principles. The referenced document says nothing about how these principles will be applied to the BoE’s two-tier system. Nor, crucially, does the BoE specify “who” will supposedly “anonymise” the raw biometric digital ID data.
There are potential privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) that the BoE could utilise, but it has seemingly rejected these in its technical specifications:
PETs are likely to introduce system complexity to varying degrees. This could create a tension with security, performance, resilience, interoperability and extensibility requirements, as well as with system build and operation costs. The Bank does not intend to receive or use personal data. [. . .] Further work is needed to assess the technology implications of such an arrangement.
Contrary to its claims, there is no firm BoE commitment to any “anonymisation and privacy protections.” All the BoE offers are vague promises that some sort of privacy will be maintained by an as-yet-unknown “off-ledger” actor.
The BoE clearly wants to hoover up users’ biometric digital ID and transaction data from the private PIPs and ESIPs. It also clearly intends to use this data for “economic and policy analysis” in order to ensure that the system delivers government and BoE “policy objectives.”
Those objectives are decided neither by the UK government nor the BoE. The policy agenda is set by the G3P regime at the global governance level.
SDG16.9: Vendor Agnostic Digital ID?
Given the international trials and pilots, the regime undoubtedly recognises the public’s apprehension and reluctance to accept government digital ID and to hand over their personal data to central banks. The trick, then, is to construct interoperable monetary and ID systems that gather everyone’s data without alerting “users” to the fact that they have subscribed to the regime’s centralised system.
Key to this two-tiered global financial system, supposedly strengthening the “financial inclusion” we all allegedly need, is the use of “permissioned DLTs” [Distributed Ledger Technologies] to form the base infrastructure. In addition, by maintaining settlement on “the central bank balance sheet,” once traditional central bank reserves are eventually replaced with “wholesale” CBDC, the two-tier, interoperable CBDC networks will extend central bank control into the global “retail” economy automatically.
Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, operate on blockchains and are examples of “permissionless” DLTs. Anonymous “nodes” [computers on the network] use checksums—or hashes—to verify transactions and authenticate the issuance of currency. These currency exchange systems can be considered—although with caveats—to be decentralised and anonymous. Some caveats are particularly important, such as the fact that these “permissionless” blockchains are very open and anonymous if one does not make use of advanced privacy technologies. Notably, in the United States, those very privacy technologies that afford any significant degree of anonymity on permissonless blockchains, as well as those who develop them, are currently under attack by the Department of Justice and, more broadly speaking, the World Economic Forum Partnership against Cybercrime, of which the DOJ is a member.
“Permissioned” DLTs, perhaps using a similar kind of blockchain, introduce access control. Anonymous nodes can become carefully selected network “validators” that could—and will, in our imminent monetary system—require users to adopt approved biometric digital ID in order to “onboard” to the network.
While permissioned “blockchains” may be touted as decentralised, as highlighted by journalist Benjamin Vitares, “permissioned” DLTs, on the contrary, empower centralised authority:
Permissioned blockchains feature only a small number of validators[, . . .] which allows them to fulfil compliance requirements more efficiently. [. . .] Since validators — and also standard users in some cases — have to go through KYC [Know Your Customer], permissioned blockchains feature limited privacy, making it nearly impossible for most participants to use the network pseudonymously. [. . .] As the network is managed by an organization that has to comply with regulations, permissioned blockchains could be subject to censorship [. . .]. Due to the small number of validators, a malicious party has an easier time infiltrating a permissioned blockchain than a permissionless ledger.
It is notable that, despite regime claims of enhanced privacy, transparency and data security, the permissioned DLTs they prefer are inherently less secure, reduce transparency and frequently rule out “privacy.” The only “decentralised” aspect of “financial inclusion” via a “two-tier” compliant, permissioned DLT is that it allows the regime to claim that the financial products and services built upon it, as well as the accompanying biometric digital ID “onboarding solutions,” are “vendor agnostic.”
In reality, the “vendors” are approved “partners” and must comply with the regime’s “policy objectives.” As long as they do, then they will be “licensed” to use the permissioned DLT.
Recently, JPMorgan published a paper on the potential for commercial banks to offer customers tokenised deposits, which it called “deposit tokens”:
Deposit tokens refer to transferable tokens issued on a blockchain by a licensed depository institution which evidence a deposit claim against the issuer. [. . .] The token form enables new functionality, such as programmability. [. . .] Deposit tokens also operate as a realistic alternative to stablecoins, on both public and permissioned blockchain environments.
The JPMorgan researchers added:
The ability for banks to settle their deposit token exposure to other banks in central bank money [. . .] alongside a clear path to interoperability with existing payment infrastructures when redeeming these deposit tokens, should support the singleness of the currency. Such a two-tiered system has the added benefit of preserving the important role that central banks play in wholesale settlement today. Real time methods to settle central bank funds, such as by using a blockchain based CBDC, may actually strengthen the current system.
Citigroup, which has a shared history with JPMorgan through its CEO Jamie Dimon, announced the roll-out of deposit tokens for its institutional clients on September 18. According to reports, the new service will “enable [the] issuance of digital money representing customers’ own funds before settling through central bank reserves on [a] distributed ledger.”
Given Citi’s promise that their new service will provide “cross-border payments, liquidity, and automated trade finance solutions on a 24/7 basis,” it seems obvious that it will eventually make use of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s FedNow service when dealing with central bank reserves. Launched in July, FedNow facilitates “the instant transfers of money between accounts at different institutions that choose to join the network” and has been labeled by critics as early infrastructure for an eventual CBDC system in the United States.
The two-tiered CBDC system, as exemplified above and now in use at some major American banks, will enable “the singleness of currency” irrespective of the coin or token people choose to use. KYC authentication and onboarding can be managed by the private coin and token vendors, such as PIPs and ESIPs in the UK.
Just like CBDC, JPMorgan’s deposit tokens are programmable. From a token user’s perspective, they are a form of “cash equivalent” offered by a private bank and can be used as a liquid asset to pay for goods and services.
Yet they can be—and almost certainly will be—reliant upon the two-tiered CBDC network controlled by the central bank. If that is the case, as seems extremely likely, they will effectively be retail CBDC in all but name.
As people are already accustomed to disclosing all of their private data to private commercial banks for a range of credit and other financial services, simply signing up to use a commercial bank’s digital tokens is unlikely to raise any new concerns. “Users” will have unwittingly submitted their biometric data to the universal identity system.
In short, it is entirely feasible that the public could be enticed into using retail CBDC without their knowledge, thus averting their objections. Similarly, the biometric digital ID they will need in order to avail themselves of digital “money” will feel “vendor agnostic” even though it will actually be forming part of the “Universal Global Identity System.”
Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs)
Once you are in the digital ID system, it may be framed as “convenient” to wrap all your biometric digital ID data into something like non-fungible tokens (NFTs), such as the Soulbound Token (SBT). According to the SBT’s concept creator, Ethereum blockchain developer Vitalik Buterin, your SBTs will store every aspect of your identity:
Imagine a world where most participants have Souls that store SBTs corresponding to a series of affiliations, memberships, and credentials. [. . .] SBTs that represent education credentials, work history, and rental contracts could serve as a persistent record of credit-relevant history. [. . .] Loans and credit lines could be represented as non-transferable but revocable SBTs, so they are nested amongst a Soul’s other SBTs—a kind of non-seizable reputational collateral—until they are repaid and subsequently burned, or better yet, replaced with proof of repayment.
Indeed: just “imagine a world” where your life is valued based upon your interoperable ID2020 certified digital ID token! Why not, while you’re at it, add your COVID-19 vaccination status to your SBT wallet?
To be fair to Buterin and his development team, they aren’t suggesting centralised control of your digital identity in an all-pervasive social credit system. On the contrary, they see SBTs as a possible solution to that pressing problem:
An ecosystem of SBTs could unlock a censorship-resistant, bottom-up alternative to top-down commercial and “social” credit systems.
There are notable drawbacks to SBTs. Each SBT corresponds to a verified credential (VC), such as an exam pass certificate. These are held in an encrypted wallet. But that wallet’s address is visible on the blockchain. That very visibility has already resulted in scammers sending “Asshole SBTs” to wallets and demanding payment in order to “burn” (remove) the unwanted “credential.”
That said, for those of you who do seek centralised global governance control of your life, SBTs decentralised “bottom-up” approach isn’t welcome. The SBT concept is unlikely to be embraced by the G3P regime.
CoinDesk, which runs the annual “Consensus” global seminar, claims it is “the most trusted media, events, indices and data company for the global crypto economy.” According to Wikipedia, CoinDesk is frequently cited by the MSM outlets, so it must be trusted. Thus, it’s no surprise that, at the 2023 Consensus gathering, Tyrone Lobban, head of blockchain development at JPMorgan’s Onyx Digital Assets platform, was among the panel of industry experts who eschewed the SBT model.
The regime is heading toward so-called “self-sovereign identities” or (SSIs), which are frequently referred to as “Decentralised Identifiers” (DIDs). As previously discussed, these are also popular with the BIS as a way of providing interoperable digital ID to our businesses.
The EU has begun to test the European Digital Identity wallet (EUDI). The EUDI is SSI-based (or DID-based).
The EU claims its digital ID wallet will be more convenient for EU citizens:
It will include digital travel credentials, and will simplify the processes of opening a bank account, registering for a SIM card, proving educational and professional qualifications, and claiming social benefits through the European Health Insurance Card.
EUDI is compliant with the EU’s “electronic identification, authentication and trust services” (eIDAS) regulations. The eIDAS 2.0 framework assumes that Europeans will use SSI-based (that is, DIDs-based) biometric digital IDs.
DIDs offer the potential that our biometric digital IDs could be secured by cryptographic proofs without the need for any centralised registry. We could each have quite firm control of our “verified credentials” (VCs), only disclosing the information on a need-to-know basis, such as when we open a bank account.
Need-to-know disclosure is a strong selling point for DIDs’ digital ID “solutions,” such as Microsoft’s ION digital ID network. It uses the existing Bitcoin blockchain “to create digital IDs for authenticating identity online.”
Microsoft’s Daniel Buchner, who, like Lobban, is dead-set against the SBT “bottom-up” approach, claimed that “ION does not rely on centralized entities, trusted validators or special protocol tokens. ION answers to no one but you.”
Such a claim sounds fantastic. If it’s true, then SDG16.9 digital ID would be safe and secure from “exploitation.” But “would” doesn’t mean “will.”
While it appears that the Unlimited Hangout article you are currently reading is moot, closer inspection of DIDs reveals that Buchner’s claims are baseless. Sure enough, DIDs are ID2020-compliant digital ID “products.”
According to Coinbase:
Decentralized ID removes the need to outsource identity management to centralized authorities like governments or big tech. Instead, user data is distributed and stored on the blockchain and in users’ own digital wallets. With DiD, trusted third-party “issuers” verify key identifiers and credentials.
So, if not the government or “big tech,” who will be the “trusted third-party issuers”? Coinbase goes on to say:
DiD works by relying on trusted third parties, called “issuers,” to verify key identifiers. These issuers could include government agencies, universities, employers, and banks.
How can we avoid outsourcing data management to “governments or big tech” if “governments or big tech” require our biometric digital IDs to issue the necessary VCs? In reality, we won’t avoid it at all.
The Coinbase narrative, like much else written in the DIDs space, appears to be designed to entice web 3.0 acolytes to “onboard.” In truth, it is mostly nonsensical word salad.
“Trust” is certainly pertinent, precisely because our biometric digital ID won’t be hidden from the so-called “trusted third parties.” Once again, it is necessary to consider the use of misleading language, even if there is no intention to mislead.
In a 2016 white paper, written for the ID2020 design workshop, the dichotomy between the concept of “decentralisation,” as most of us understand its meaning, and its use when discussing digital products and services was laid bare.
In the white paper “ID2020,” researcher Kiara Robles noted:
Identity in the physical world has typically been asserted via decentralized mechanisms, mainly paper; i.e., identity is managed individually with claims and attributes that are verified by third parties. Modern computing techniques have centralized this process with various registries and databases that have become repositories for unintentional exploitation.
Robles noted that DLTs, like blockchains, “may be suited for implementing some aspects of classic information security principles [but are] not well-suited for other[s].” The problem is that storing our most personal data on a permanent blockchain presents a number of security vulnerabilities. The alleged DIDs solution is to “store a signed statement from a seriously credible source [. . .] but without tons of personal information on it.”
The statement from the “seriously credible source” then acts as proof of the relevant VC [verified credential]. The problem is, in order to provide the statement, the “seriously credible source” will not only have access to all your biometric data but is unlikely to be anything other than a regime-approved “seriously credible source.”
Our current system of numerous forms of ID, including biometric digital ID, such as UK driving licenses, are all verified and/or issued by various “third parties.” Modern DLTs, even permissionless DLTs, centralise all “trusted third party” issuers, which greatly increases the risk of exploitation, whether “unintentional” or not.
Presently, our somewhat ad hoc identification systems are genuinely “decentralised”—or at least are far more so than any computer network. A DLT-based system, by its nature, is not. In reference to DLTs, the term “decentralised” is comparative.
Permissionless DLTs, such as permissionless blockchains, are more “decentralised” than permissioned networks. If permissioned biometric digital ID blockchains are also “interoperable,” global centralisation of all biometric digital ID data is eminently achievable. All that would be required is some sort of global DID standardisation.
Referencing the Worldwide Web Consortium’s (W3C’s) “Credentials Community Group,” Robles continued:
The goal of this Group is to forge a path for a secure, decentralized system of credentials that would empower both individual people and organizations on the Web to store, transmit, and receive digitally verifiable proof of qualifications and achievements [VCs].
The W3C was founded in 1994 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the European Commission (the EU), and the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It seeks industry agreement to establish web standards. Consortium members include ID2020 founding partner Microsoft and ID2020 general partners Meta (formerly Facebook) and Mastercard.
In July 2022, the W3C announced Decentralised Identifiers v1.0 as a global standard “to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible and interoperable.” These were accompanied by the W3C Verified Credential data model v1.1 standards.
Kalia Young, co-founder of the Internet Identity Workshop—funded by Microsoft, Google and others—and a W3C expert contributor recounted how the DIDs v1.0 standards came into being:
I still remember that first whiteboard session for what would become Decentralized Identifiers (DID) v1.0 that I helped facilitate following the ID2020 conference in 2016. Since then, as a community steward and contributor, I have had the pleasure to watch the DID specification progress through workshopping at the Internet Identity Workshop. [. . .] I look forward to helping organizations understand and implement this standard.
In January 2018, Peggy Johnson, then-executive vice president of business development at Microsoft and now CEO of the “augmented reality” company Magic Leap, wrote about Microsoft’s and ID2020’s enthusiasm for DIDs:
[F]undamental rights and services like voting, healthcare, housing and education are tethered to legal proof of identification — you can’t participate if you don’t have it. [. . .] As discussions begin this week at the World Economic Forum, creating universal access to identity is an issue at the top of Microsoft’s agenda. [. . .] Last summer that Microsoft took a first step, collaborating [. . .] on a blockchain-based identity prototype [. . .] we pursued this work in support of the ID2020 Alliance — a global public-private partnership[.] [. . .] Microsoft, our partners in the ID2020 Alliance, and developers around the globe will collaborate on an open source, self-sovereign, blockchain-based identity system that allows people, products, apps and services to interoperate across blockchains, cloud providers and organizations. [. . .] We will also help establish standards that ensure this work is impactful and scalable. Our shared ambition with ID2020 is to start piloting this solution in the coming year to bring it to those who need it most, beginning with refugee populations.
In 2017, ID2020 founding partner Accenture worked with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to develop the Biometric Identity Management system (BIMS).
Accenture reported the objectives of the BIMS project:
To better manage its global refugee population, UNHCR recognized that it needed a standardized, integrated solution with a centralized data base for identity management. [. . .] Collaborating closely with UNHCR, in just six weeks Accenture configured a pilot Biometric Identity Management System. [. . .] The technology captures and stores fingerprints, iris data and facial images of individuals [. . .]. Accenture and UNHCR put an early version BIMS to the test during a four-week pilot at the agency’s Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi. The Camp’s nearly 17,000 refugees were rapidly registered and verified during the pilot. [. . .] We have now initiated a global roll-out of the system commencing in Thailand and Chad. For refugees, the system gives them a permanent identity record. “I can be someone now,” explained one Chadian refugee. “I am registered globally with the UN and you’ll always know who I am.”
Microsoft soon joined the BIMS project to develop it into a DIDs system, using a permissioned DLT blockchain. The BBC reported:
The digital ID network was unveiled at the ID2020 summit in New York on Monday. ID2020 is an alliance of governments, public sector organisations and technology companies working together to help the UN realise its [SDG16.9] goal.
Yet again, the impact of ID2020-compliant DIDs-based digital ID in countries like Malawi has been repressive and exclusionary. The claimed benefits of sustainable development are, as usual, entirely absent.
It is all very well for probably well-meaning people like Kiara Robles to talk about “unintentional exploitation,” but, the fact is, there are plenty of people in positions of power and authority with nefarious agendas who are intent upon exploiting others. An SDG16.9 global system of digital ID is the perfect tool to “realise” their goals. Are we supposed to amble about like little lambs, led by irretrievably naïve “shepherds,” into a planned, realised dystopia?
A recent report from the Association for Progressive Communication (APC) highlights how the G3P regime’s DIDs-based digital ID system has been used in Malawi:
Recent instances of the use of state surveillance apparatus for repressive purposes and prosecutions, compounded by a lack of data and online privacy protections [. . .] have heightened fears that the country is regressing in terms of safeguarding online rights. The environment is impacting both ordinary citizens and online journalists. [. . .] Since its implementation in 2018, the national ID has become the only form of identification for all public transactions, including voter registration, mandatory SIM Card registration, banking, MRA, farming subsidies, cash transfers, and Covid-19 vaccinations. Implementing the national ID means people’s data is centralised through the ID system.
Digital ID, linked to SIM card registration, has been used to track Malawian journalists, leading to arrests on charges of, for example, “insulting the President.” Further misgivings have been raised with the UN Human Right Council by NGOs concerned about the Malawi government’s use of digital ID to exclude targetted communities:
In 2017 there were concerns surrounding the exclusion of citizens in Malawi, including outstanding “registration of refugees, asylum-seekers and Malawians of Indian origin. [. . .] The collection of large amounts of personal information pertaining to identities — including biometrics — often form tempting targets for criminals and other actors for malicious hacking and cyber intrusion. [. . .] We note grave concern over the use and collection of biometric data in the new digital identification cards. The aggregation and use of biometric data should be sharply limited, even if such processing is aimed at increasing convenience or justified as a way to enhance security.
SDG16.9 Belies Sustainable Development
The UN produces annual SDG progress reports. Yet, the 2022 Goals Report says absolutely nothing about its stunning success with SDG16.9. Despite it significant achievements in India, Uganda, Nigeria, Malawi and elsewhere, this is not something the regime seemingly wishes to publicly celebrate.
The reason for this reticence is obvious. To this point, SDG16.9 digital ID has been rolled out using coercion, deception and enforcement. It has already caused immense harm to the most vulnerable and looks set to continue doing so. The roll-out of digital ID exposes “sustainable development” for what it really is.
SDG16.9 belies the fluffy rhetoric the regime uses to sell its oppressive “sustainable” agenda. People do not want to be forced to use its digital ID or be subject to “financial inclusion.” Resistance is evident everywhere.
This resistance and public opinion does not deter the regime. It is proceeding at pace, regardless of our wishes. Our consent is not required. The global-governance regime is inherently anti-democratic and opposes “freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
Believing that “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” is a justifiable response to an alleged “global climate emergency” is to accept a future which targets the most vulnerable for exclusion and controls everyone through the use of deception, coercion and force.
It means accepting a future where all life is monitored and controlled by a “global governance regime,” all justified by the belief that only the regime can “develop sustainably” and manage our lives. The only viable means of resistance is to build systems at the local level that will allow us to resist “inclusion” in the regime’s control grid. If we acquiesce, then the system of digital ID planned by the stewards of SDG 16.9 is inevitable.
Authors
Iain Davis is an independent investigative journalist, author and blogger from the UK. His focus is upon widening readers awareness of evidence that the so-called mainstream media won't report. A frequent contributor to UK Column, Iain's work has been featured by the OffGuardian, the Corbett Report, Technocracy News, Lew-Rockwell and other independent news outlets. You can read more of his work on his blog: - https://iaindavis.com
Whitney Webb has been a professional writer, researcher and journalist since 2016. She has written for several websites and, from 2017 to 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for Mint Press News. She currently writes for The Last American Vagabond and Unlimited Hangout
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