by Chris Black
The United Nations has proposed the worldwide adoption of bank account-linked digital IDs as part of its “Global Digital Compact” policy recommendations, raising concerns that virtually all governments could use such IDs to oppress their critics.
A May 2023 policy brief explained that the UN aims to guide governments and private corporations across the world in working together to achieve the global body’s vision for the world’s “digital future,” which includes “digital IDs linked with bank or mobile money accounts,” according to the document.
The digital ID proposal is ostensibly aimed at helping to fulfill the UN’s 2030 Agenda mandate to “reduce poverty,” by helping to minimize “leakage, errors and costs” in the “delivery of social protection coverage” — essentially government benefits — to beneficiaries.
The 2030 Agenda was adopted by the UN in 2015 and establishes a set of 17 goals that are rooted in Marxist theory. These goals, set to be achieved by 2030, aim to control the population through abortion and contraception, reduce fossil fuel consumption, and instigate a global ID system in which people’s every move will be tracked and monitored.
The Compact proposes 16 other digital tech uses designed to align with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, such as the use of “cloud-based data platforms” and “blockchain-enabled tracking systems” to measure and track “environmental and social impacts across value chains,” such as product purchases and energy use.
The document fails to note that just as bank-linked digital IDs could help ensure the proper deposit of welfare and other government funds to individuals, so could they block individuals from their own funds in a form of political persecution, as the World Economic Forum (WEF) has recently admitted.
This scenario has already taken place in Canada, where citizens linked to the 2022 Freedom Convoy had their bank accounts frozen to force them to withdraw their support for the convoy.
Such totalitarian restriction of human freedoms would be amplified through a central bank digital currency (CBDC), which would give governments access to individual bank accounts. CBDCs are increasingly materializing across the world as a majority of countries are either in the process of developing one, have already initiated a pilot test or fully launched a CBDC.
There is also an ongoing effort by global banks, including the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), to enforce a global CBDC. On Monday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s managing director announced that the organization is “working hard” on a “global CBDC platform,” which the BIS has been working on designing since 2020.