{"id":22537,"date":"2019-05-15T10:51:33","date_gmt":"2019-05-15T10:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/?p=22537"},"modified":"2019-05-16T17:01:33","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T17:01:33","slug":"kenyas-push-for-a-national-id-raises-red-flags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/kenyas-push-for-a-national-id-raises-red-flags\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenya\u2019s push for a national ID raises red flags"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"meta-author\">Patrick Gathara<\/span> <time class=\"content_place_line\" datetime=\"2019-05-15\"><\/time><\/p>\n<p>In 2008, following the violence that accompanied the disputed presidential election, Kenyan politicians came together to form a government of national unity.<\/p>\n<p>One of their very first acts of the GNU cabinet was to set in motion a brazen scheme that took advantage of a shortage of the country\u2019s staple to line their pockets. By the time they were done, fully a third of the country was starving and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nation.co.ke\/news\/How-Kenya-lost-millions-in-suspect-maize-supply-deals-\/1056-914740-14vxte2z\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">close to $350-million<\/a> had been lost.<\/p>\n<p>So Kenyans have good reason to be wary whenever their famously pugnacious political class agree on something. It almost always means grief for citizens.<br \/>\nIn the last few weeks, they have had especially good reason to be concerned as the ruling class unites behind a new system for registering all citizens. Under the scheme, which was snuck in via innocuous legislative amendments and which the government appears intent to force down Kenyan throats, everyone aged six and above is required to register for a Huduma Namba (\u2018service number\u2019) in order to access government services.<\/p>\n<p>The government claims that it wants to establish what it calls \u201ca single source of truth\u201d but the opaqueness of the process as well as the scope of the personal data it hopes to collect \u2014 from biometric data to DNA to information on personal assets \u2014 has raised alarm among human rights, privacy and anti-corruption organisations.<\/p>\n<p>Read further: <a href=\"https:\/\/mg.co.za\/article\/2019-05-15-00-kenyas-push-for-a-national-id-raises-red-flags\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/mg.co.za\/article\/2019-05-15-00-kenyas-push-for-a-national-id-raises-red-flags<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patrick Gathara In 2008, following the violence that accompanied the disputed presidential election, Kenyan politicians came together to form a government of national unity. One of their very first acts of the GNU cabinet was to set in motion a brazen scheme that took advantage of a shortage of the country\u2019s staple to line their [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","region-kenya","type-news-articles","item-year-660","item-theme-id-documents-and-passports"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22537","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=22537"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22541,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22537\/revisions\/22541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}