Tragedies of the stateless
Published: 20/Sep/2010
Source: Open Society Foundations
by Adam Hussein Adam, Africa program officer for the Open Society Justice Initiative’s citizenship and statelessness project.
“Are my documents in order?” I asked the official. This was my fifth attempt in ten years to obtain a Kenyan passport. Now I was before the Criminal Investigations Department for an in-person “vetting.” “Identification cards could be forged, and so people’s pictures,” was the official’s response. Of course, the vetting process, which has existed in Kenya for the last 20 years, targets only members of select ethnic, religious, and racial groups. As a fourth-generation Nubian—a group long discriminated against in Kenya—it was no surprise that I had been selected.
Read further on OSF website: Tragedies of the Stateless