KINGSTON, Jamaica — Amber Group chief executive Dushyant Savadia told global engineering leaders in New York last week that the lack of legal identity for an estimated 1.1 billion people is one of humanity’s biggest unresolved problems, using Jamaica’s National Identification System (NIDS) rollout as an example of how countries can address the issue.

Savadia made the remarks during a featured interview at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Laureate Summit, where he became the first Jamaican and Caribbean national invited to speak at the forum, according to Amber Group. The April 22 to 24 event in New York brought together global engineering and technology leaders, including Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive of NVIDIA, who received the IEEE Medal of Honor.

During the 35-minute discussion, Savadia said people without legal identification are often locked out of banking, healthcare, voting, insurance and digital commerce.

“Give them an identity and you give them a door into every system that was previously closed to them,” he said.

He pointed to India’s Aadhaar programme, which onboarded nearly a billion people, and said Jamaica’s NIDS rollout could make the country a model for other small island developing states.

Savadia also argued that lack of identity can contribute to crime and social exclusion because people who “do not exist in the system have no stake in it”.

The IEEE, founded in 1963, has more than 400,000 members in over 160 countries and is regarded as one of the world’s leading engineering and technology organisations.

Amber Group said Savadia was invited because of the company’s work in artificial intelligence, robotics, internet of things, cybersecurity and fintech.