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.
The National Identification Registration Agency (NIRA) is continuing to hold unto 15,000 national identity cards of members of the Maragoli community on grounds that they are not a recognised tribe in Uganda. The Maragoli community settled in present-day Uganda in…
TRYING to get an ID card issued with the correct ID number is proving a major headache for one Richards Bay resident who, due to retire within the month, is worried she will not be able to claim a State…
By Fasika Tadesse The fund is part of a 190 million dollar financing of the Bank As the last funding of this fiscal year, the World Bank (WB) has granted 345 million Br to the Vital Events Registration Agency (VERA)…
The African Development Bank (AfDB) recently introduced its new fingerprint-embedded Laissez-Passer document at ID4Africa 2017 in Windhoek, Namibia. The travel document for regional development is one of a series of regional projects across the continent with the goal of using…
By Laura Bingham This April, a mobile registration team was hard at work again in the Kibera neighborhood of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. For five days, a team offered people help in securing national identity cards—a document that also serves…
Le président de la Commission parlementaire des droits, des libertés et des relations extérieures , Imed Khemiri a déclaré au journal « Assabah » dans son édition de ce samedi 13 mai que la commission a enfin adopté le projet de la…
Les organisations de la Société Civile qui œuvrent pour la transparence et la lutte contre la corruption dénoncent et condamnent les conditions d’octroi du marché public pour la délivrance des passeports congolais, le qualifiant de “contrat léonin” avec l’implication d’un…
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees, UNHCR, Regional Representative for West Africa, Liz Ahua, has said massive displacement in Nigeria’s North-East zone posed great dangers of statelessness for victims. Ahua, who stated this at the opening ceremony of a…
By Elsa Buchanan Humanitarian organisations in Chad have commenced an identification operation to help Chadian returnees at risk of statelessness to get documentation. With nearly 400,000 refugees on its territory, including more than 71,000 people from the Central African Republic…
Windhoek – Namibia is among a few countries in Africa to have digitalised the National Population Register, which is fully integrated, combining the birth, ID, marriage and death registers under one profile, Vice-President Nickey Iyambo has confirmed. Read more