Events

Speaker: Kene Esom (PGR), University of Warwick Law School

Chair: Daniel Matthews, University of Warwick Law School

Title: 'Digital ID Infrastructure, Health Access and the Case for a Derivative State Duty'

Abstract: Digital identity systems increasingly mediate access to essential services, yet their role in health access is often treated as a technical or privacy concern rather than one of rights and accountability. I conceptualize digital ID infrastructure as a proximate mediator of health access, showing how enrollment, biometric authentication, database linkage, and AI-enabled analytics can determine recognition and admission to care. These risks are especially acute for people in HIV key populations subject to criminalizing laws, for whom identification may intensify exclusion, exposure, and deterrence. Drawing on the rights to health and science, nondiscrimination, non-retrogression, and due diligence under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, I trace the contours of a derivative state duty concerning digital ID-mediated health access. When states make identity infrastructure a condition of care, human rights accountability must extend to its design, operation, safeguards, remedies, and delivery by private actors.