Memdeklaro: Self-Declared Identity as an Identity Issuer of Last Resort

Modern societies increasingly rely on government-issued identity documents to establish access to employment, housing, healthcare, banking, telecommunications, travel and other services. Government identity systems can provide administrative functions, but exclusion from them can produce severe social consequences. Birth registration failures, documentation barriers, statelessness and political persecution can leave people without a practical means of establishing a recognized legal identity.This paper introduces Memdeklaro, a free and open source project for creating a self-declared identity document, designed as a social and personal self-attestation: a means for a person to express a self-chosen name and personal ties in their own words, without relying on a government, birth parents or another third party authority.The paper further explores the proposition that a person can retain a meaningful personal identity and participate socially and economically, even in cases where a state does not grant them a legal identity.