Not all African countries require their citizens to carry a national identity card, but the number is rapidly increasing. ECOWAS Member States have committed to introduce a common-form biometric identity card by 2017. The introduction of these new systems may be based on concerns for national security or to improve delivery of public services: but for these aims to be achieved, law and procedures must ensure that people are not arbitrarily excluded from acquiring these documents.
Every citizen should have the right to a passport, enabling international travel, which should not be removed except following due process of law (for example, from a person accused of a serious crime).
Only some African countries establish an independent judicial procedure for a person to obtain a “certificate of nationality” or alternative document that is conclusive proof that a person is a national.
By Zelda Venter Pretoria – Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) scored major legal victories in two separate cases on behalf of people who have been fighting the various arms of government for years in a bid to simply continue with…
REPORTS yesterday said the Registrar-General’s office would from Monday resume issuing birth certificates, passports and identity documents (IDs) after months of closure due to COVID-19 lockdowns. The exercise, we are told, would target the marginalised San community in Tsholotsho and…
By Victor Raballa & Angeline Ochieng Over the years, different groups of Kenyans have sued the British government for one reason or another. There were maimed and bereaved families in Samburu that sued after unexploded ordnances were left behind by…
The minister was reacting to a question from a journalist at Uganda Media Center on Saturday about complaints from the community that they are treated differently because of their ethnicity. .. ICT and National Guidance minister, Dr Chris Baryomunsi, says…
By Nqobile Tshili National identity documents such as a birth certificate and a national identity card confirm an individual’s citizenship. People who do not have such documents are considered stateless. According to international law, a stateless person is someone who…
By Ayang Macdonald Members of a ‘stateless’ community in Kenya known as the Shona have received digital ID cards from the Kenyan government, ending approximately five decades of their statelessness. Kenyan outlet The Star, in a feature report, chronicles the…
In a historic move expected to end racial profiling, Government yesterday abolished the “00” code used to identify persons of mixed race, Caucasians and Asians on national identity cards. Presenting a ministerial statement in the National Assembly yesterday, Home Affairs…
BY KETRAH JJEMBA, KAMPALA A RIFT between Banyarwanda, a community of Rwandan origin living in Uganda and the immigration offices at the Ministry of internal Affairs over passport issuance has deepened. Their war has now reached High Court in Kampala…
By Kenneth Matimaire Children born to victims of Gukurahundi massacres have been deprived of their right to access birth registration leading to dire human rights violations associated with statelessness, a new study has shown. The findings featured in a study…
by AKELLO ODENYO and CHRISTINE NTINYARI “We were alive and dead at the same time, like ghosts, because we had no identity.” Those were the words of Zephaniah Muungani, a member of the Shona community living in Kenya. “Generation after…