By Business Daily Africa
Close to 20,000 northern Kenya residents, who registered as asylum seekers to benefit from services offered to refugees, have sued the government seeking to be removed from the database and given national identity cards.
The Kenyans, who live near the refugee camps, were registered as refugees as children or were put in the database to access medicine and food, which was available to the refugees, during drought seasons. In the petition filed before the High Court, the 14,762 from Garissa and the 4,952 persons from Wajir want the government compelled to clear them from the database and given IDs.
“The victims of double registration have been denied so many political rights and economic entitlements are inaccessible to them for lack of their national IDs,” the petition stated.
They said most of them were registered as refugees or found themselves in the database when drought and hunger hit the counties or poor parents had did not have the means to cater to their large families. The parents were unaware of the future repercussions on such children.
Led by Hamdi Mohamed Muhumed, Sahal Abdi Amin and Haki Na Sheria Initiative, they have missed out on formal employment, opening a bank account, accessing business premises, health services and education after high school because of the lack of IDs.
They have sued the government, United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and Commissioner for Refugee Affairs.
The petition says the government has subjected them to unfair vetting severally, which they have willingly cooperated but the IDs have not been forthcoming. The latest vetting, they claimed, was conducted in 2019. They are apprehensive that the government might close the Daadab refugee camp and repatriate many of them to Somalia, yet they are Kenyans.
“The respondents have failed and continue to fail to fulfil their obligation in ensuring that all Kenyans specifically from the marginalised communities in Garissa and Wajir counties have access to and enjoy socio-economic rights and this forced the parents from such areas to go to the surrounding refugee camps and have their children registered as refugees to have access to such rights,” the petition stated.
“To make matters worse, under the proposed National Integrated Identity Management System it is provided that persons without the national identification cards shall not be issued with the Huduma card, but they shall have no option but they will be forced to be registered as foreigners and issued with a foreigner’s Huduma card, which shall further disadvantage them by rendering them stateless, yet stateless persons are not recognised in the regulations.”