STATELESSNESS AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE EAST AFRICAN COMMUNITY inaccessible unless the person is connected or has some legal assistance. Court review may be expensive and difficult to access and in some cases is completely excluded. Rwanda and Burundi, with their civil law tradition, have had identity card requirements since independence. The current laws in force governing identification are Law No. 14/2008 in Rwanda, the same law that regulates birth registration, as well as the civil code of 1988; and Ordonnance No. 530/060 of 27 March 1978 in Burundi. The Rwandan cards are already machine-readable and the plan is to upgrade them to include biometric data with an embedded SIM card.90 UNDP supported a major effort to distribute national identity cards in Burundi in advance of the 2010 elections, when presentation of an ID card became for the first time a requirement to vote. More than one million cards were issued. A pilot project to issue national ID smartcards was launched in 2013, and a biometric voters’ card was introduced for use in the 2015 elections;91 however, the national identity card in use remains a card photo ID. Kenya’s first law on registration was proposed in 1915, and implemented by the British colonial authorities after World War I for the control of the “native” population; the current legislation originated as the 1947 Registration of Persons Ordinance, incorporated into the laws of independent Kenya as the Registration of Persons Act. The ordinance initially applied to all men over the age of 16 (previously it had applied to Africans only); women were included within the registration requirements from 1978; and the age of compulsory registration was raised to 18 years in 1980.92 Since 1995, the national identity card has been machinereadable, and a biometric card is now being introduced. The Registration of Persons Act remains in force, although a Registration and Identification of Persons Bill that would repeal and replace both the Registration of Persons Act and the Births and Deaths Registration Act has been before parliament since 2014.93 Although both Uganda and Tanzania were subjected to similar types of control over the “native” population, with requirements to carry passes imposed for the purposes of controlling movement and ensuring tax collection, these measures never penetrated as deeply as in Kenya, and they were abandoned on independence. In the absence of a national identity card, a range of other documents were used for proof of identity, including voters’ cards, party membership cards, tax receipts, driving licences, and letters issued by employers or local authorities.94 Both Tanzania and Uganda adopted legislation to allow for the issue of ID cards many years ago—Tanzania in 198695, and Uganda in 199996—but they only took action to implement these laws and the requirement to hold a national identity card decades later. Uganda adopted a new Registration of Persons Act in 2015, consolidating, amending and replacing the existing laws on registration of births and deaths and national identity cards. South Sudan also introduced a national identity card from January 2012, under authority of the Nationality 90 Joseph Atick, The Identity Ecosystem of Rwanda: A Case Study of a Performant ID System in an African Development Context, ID4Africa, May 2016; visit to Rwandan identification authority during ID4Africa conference, Kigali, May 2016. 91 UNDP, “Project Document: Emergency Support to the Burundi Electoral Process, UN Peacebuilding Fund Immediate Response Facility”, 2010; FIDH, “Burundi Elections 2010: An opportunity not to be missed to consolidate peace”, November 2010, pp. 30-31, available at: https://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/BurundianOpportunity.pdf; Burundi: The requirements and procedures to obtain a national identity card; description of the national identity card [BDI104778.FE], Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, 11 March 2014. 92 History outlined in An Identity Crisis? Study on the Issuance of National Identity Cards in Kenya, Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR), 2007; see also Samantha Balaton-Chrimes “Statelessness, identity cards and citizenship as status in the case of the Nubians of Kenya”, Citizenship Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2014), pp. 15-28. 93 Registration and Identification of Persons Bill, 2014, Kenya Gazette Supplement No. 153 (Senate Bills No. 39); See also Kenya Human Rights Commission, Memorandum on the Registration and Identification of Persons Bill, 2014. 94 See, for example, “Report on the identity documents available in the Ugandan legal and administrative system and other supporting documentation for applications for participation in proceedings in Uganda”, International Criminal Court Victims Participation and Reparations Section, 12 October 2007. 95 Registration and Identification of Persons Act No. 11 of 1986. 96 Citizenship and Immigration Control Act 1999, Part IV, provided for “Registration of citizens and issue of national identification numbers and national identity cards.” UNHCR / September 2018 29