Kenya’s digital ID delivery back on: Court sets aside latest injunction

A Kenyan court, early this week, gave the greenlight for the issuance of the Maisha Namba to continue, saying allowing the ban to stay on is not in the public interest.

The decision by the Milimani High Court on August 12 lifts a ban imposed on the ID issuance process last month, Citizen Digital reports. The court had suspended the rollout of the digital ID on July 25 for the second time in seven months.

In the reversal decision made public Monday, the judge, Justice Lawrence Mugambi, said undoing the injunction was in the interest of the people as a prolonged halt in the national ID issuance process would have a severe negative impact on them.

In the last arguments submitted to the court before this decision, lawyers holding briefs for the government had argued that the injunction on the Maisha Namba rollout was contributing to a serious backlog as around 1.2 million people who had applied for ID cards were unable to get them.

Citizen Services Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Interior, Julius Bitok, had also told the court that a prolonged ban on the ID issuance would lead to many negative consequences including some Kenyans losing employment opportunities, recalls The Star.

Lawyers for the organizations, meanwhile, insisted on the unconstitutionality and other human rights violations of the national ID system.

In the past few years, the Kenyan government has been struggling with legal challenges to its national digital ID implementation efforts. In the current circumstances, it is facing a lawsuit filed by two rights advocacy organizations – Haki na Sheria and Katiba Institute – challenging the constitutionality of the Maisha Namba project.

Like the previous Huduma Namba ID scheme, the challengers hold that the Maisha Namba is exclusionary and not rights-respecting, among other issues. Late last month, one rights advocacy organization, Namati Kenya, signaled in a statement on its X account that the government was repeating the same mistakes it had urged it to correct before launching the Maisha Namba.

Though considered a welcomed initiative, the events surrounding the Maisha Namba digital ID have set the project implementation process on a rugged path.

Article Topics

Africa  |  biometrics  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  Kenya  |  Maisha Namba