Search
Content type: News & Analysis
In a ruling handed down on 14 October 2021 by the High Court of Kenya in relation to an application filed by Katiba Institute calling for a halt to the rollout of the Huduma card in the absence of a data impact assessment, the Kenyan High Court found that the Data Protection Act applied retrospectively.
Background to the case
Huduma Namba as initially proposed
In January 2019, the Kenyan Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendment) Act No. 18 of 2018 came into effect, introducing a raft of amendments…
Content type: Long Read
This piece was last updated in June 2021.
In many countries, access to social protection (such as welfare programmes or healthcare) is made conditional on producing a form of identification (“ID”). But obtaining a recognised and accurate ID is often a process riddled with discriminatory designs, bureaucracy and technical failures that prevent individuals from accessing the services they are entitled to. Even when people eventually get an ID, it might not accurately reflect who they are,…
Content type: Video
You can find out more about Haki na Sheria here: http://hakinasheria.org/
Find out more about double registration in Keren's piece "In Kenya, thousands left in limbo without ID cards" in CodaStory: https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/kenya-biometrics-double-registration/
Find out more about the Huduma Namba case on our website: https://privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/3350/why-huduma-namba-ruling-matters-future-digital-id-and-not-just-kenya
You can listen and…
Content type: Long Read
Background
Kenya’s National Integrated Identity Management Scheme (NIIMS) is a biometric database of the Kenyan population, that will eventually be used to give every person in the country a unique “Huduma Namba” for accessing services. This system has the aim of being the “single point of truth”, a biometric population register of every citizen and resident in the country, that then links to multiple databases across government and, potentially, the private sector.
NIIMS was introduced…
Content type: News & Analysis
On 30 January 2020, Kenya’s High Court handed down its judgment on the validity of the implementation of the National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS), known as the Huduma Namba. Privacy International submitted an expert witness testimony in the case. We await the final text of the judgment, but the summaries presented by the judges in Court outline the key findings of the Court. Whilst there is much there that is disappointing, the Court found that the implementation of NIIMS…
Content type: News & Analysis
Today, the Kenyan Government is starting their biometric registration exercise known as NIIMS, leading to the issuing of Huduma Namba ID numbers. Along with our colleagues and partners in the human rights community in Kenya, we are very worried about the ramifications of this system for people in Kenya, and particularly for marginalised communities.
Thanks to the hard work and timely action of civil society in Kenya, the judiciary has intervened at the last minute. A court ruling on…