Alice Ni (NYU Gallatin) | Nubian Rights Forum | Nairobi, Kenya
I have been working with Nubian Rights Forum for two weeks now, and my experience thus far has given me a deeper understanding of the issues surrounding identification laws and the overall political inequalities that exist in Kenya.
Nubian Rights Forum is located in the Kibera slum, within the Nubian community, which is the targeted beneficiary of the organization. NRF has close ties with the community: the chairman and multiple higher-ups were born and raised in Kibera, and the various community-oriented programs foster and strengthen those ties. Paralegals conduct outreach daily, where they visit the homes of clients to follow up on the process of obtaining identification, talk to potential clients who are apprehensive about interacting with government officials (and are therefore hesitant to apply for the ID card), and encourage new parents to obtain birth certificates for their children promptly so that their children will be able to enroll in school without issue and they will have an easier time obtaining their ID card after they turn 18. NRF also holds monthly community forums with different topics depending on the demographics of the participants, such as specificities for each step of the identification documentation process, updates on government policy, gender-based violence, female hygiene, and more. These forums are also an opportunity for NRF to identify possible candidates as community ambassadors, who work closely with the organization and assist in mobilizing the community. Some of the paralegals I worked with were ex-clients of NRF and gradually worked their way up to a full-time position from the position of community ambassador.
Participating in community outreach where I walked around the community and talked to people gave me a better understanding of both the issues the community faces and the discriminatory, arduous application processes for the requisite identification documents. The community suffers from a dire lack of physical infrastructure; much of the housing is made of wood and mud, with tin sheets covering the top of the structure and a thin layer of concrete spread outside the mud on the walls. There is no running water, and people have to refill their jugs from water trucks. Many residents relied on illegally tapping power lines as their sole source of electricity, but this method is unreliable and prone to frequent outages.
It is, however, impossible to obtain identification without access to electricity and the Internet. The application process for identification cards is hybrid, with both an in-person vetting component and a digital component, where payment and some information must be submitted through the Kenyan E-citizen portal. Although the ID card is indispensable for participating in society, there are no fee waivers available for low-income individuals, worsening their circumstances.
Worse still, applications for each piece of documentation build on top of others. For a child to obtain her birth certificate, she needs her parents’ ID cards (or death certificates if they are deceased). The birth certificate, in turn, is needed to apply for an ID card when a child turns 18. Driver’s licenses and passports subsequently build on the ID card. If any link in the chain is missing, it must be restored before one can proceed.
It is under this context that the Unique Personal Identifier (UPI) is being proposed in Kenya, immediately after the previous digitization attempt, Huduma Namba, was declared unconstitutional by the Kenyan High Court in 2021 before it was even implemented due to the excessive amount of biometric data collected. The UPI as currently written will lead to a centralized, digitized system, raising concerns about not only privacy and security, but also concerns regarding the allocation of government resources, as the Kenyan government is already carrying a concerning amount of debt and other infrastructure projects are in much more urgent need of investment.
Unemployment is also a major issue, in Kenya overall but especially problematic in Kibera, where estimates of the unemployment rate are consistently over 50%. I am currently working with my supervisor and the project manager on securing funding for garbage collection employment programs to clean up the community while also providing sustainable, long-term jobs. I hope to be able to receive some such funds and began to implement this project, and I will update you all on the progress!