Rasna Warah<\/span><\/p>\nWhen President Uhuru Kenyatta declared that the newly rolled out National Integrated Identity Management System, popularly known as Huduma Namba, would be the \u201csingle source of truth\u201d about every Kenyan, I wondered if he understood the reality of what it means to be a citizen of a country where identity often determines destiny, and where the acquisition of documents like IDs and passports is quite often based on the whims of the state, or one\u2019s ability to pay a bribe.<\/p>\n
Besides, what \u201ctruth\u201d is revealed about a person through this biometric registration system? I have a Huduma Namba, therefore I am? Do I cease to exist in the eyes of the state because I do not possess one? What truths are not \u2013 and can never be \u2013 revealed by a mere number? Can my hopes and dreams, pains and sufferings, joys and disappointments, be encapsulated in a plastic card in my possession?<\/p>\n
The Huduma Namba form requires those registering to provide details of their national ID, National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF), National Social Security Fund (NSSF), birth certificate, driver\u2019s licence and Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) PIN numbers. I wonder how an 80-year-old Turkana woman will obtain a Huduma Namba when she doesn\u2019t even have a birth certificate or an NSSF number.<\/p>\n
Read further: https:\/\/www.theeastafricanreview.info\/op-eds\/2019\/04\/20\/huduma-namba-another-tool-to-oppress-kenyans\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since independence the Kenyan state has decided who is an \u201cinsider\u201d and who is an \u201coutsider\u201d and which territorial spaces they should occupy. This has led to the politics of exclusion and marginalization based on geographical boundaries, religion or ethnic identity. These second-class citizens are then forced to use personalised patronage networks to gain access […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","region-kenya","type-news-articles","item-year-660","item-theme-discrimination","item-theme-ethnic-racial-religious","item-theme-id-documents-and-passports"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22421"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22422,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22421\/revisions\/22422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}