CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE HORN OF AFRICA \Y has a kebele office, and one of the main responsibilities of these offices is to issue kebele IDs. The kebele card is required for virtually all identification purposes, including those where citizenship status is relevant: to register a SIM card, open a financial account, travel internally, stay in a hotel, obtain a birth, death or marriage certificate, acquire a passport, and enrol to vote. The process of obtaining a kebele ID varies across the country; the documents themselves are commonly in the form of booklets or cards, without a standard format. As in case of an application for a birth certificate, a committee investigates whether the information given by the applicant is correct. The committee will rely on the officials’ personal knowledge of the applicant and his or her family or clan, and on witness testimony; in some kebeles an applicant may need to own property or present a person who is a property owner in the area as a guarantor. If a person has moved within Ethiopia, he or she will need to produce a kebele ID from the former place of residence. Kebele cards generally include the same information: full name (including father and grandfather; as in Eritrea, paternal jus sanguinis is still privileged despite formal equality in law), mother’s name, photo, data of birth, occupation, ethnic group, emergency contact details, kebele, woreda, date of issue, issuing officer, and kebele stamp. '°” If a person is not recognised as qualifying for a kebele ID, the lack of ID creates serious consequences, including during police stop and search exercises, when ID must be produced, at the risk of detention until a guarantor can provide testimony as to their identity. Ethiopia is in the process of establishing a national identity card that will — it is planned — replace the kebele ID as the most common form of identification. The 2012 law provides for the new national ID to be managed by “an appropriate federal organ”. The ID project was initially under the jurisdiction of the internal security agency, known as the Information Network Security Agency (INSA), which also has the responsibility for digital technology and cybersecurity and reports directly to the Prime Minister. The project has been taken over by the Ministry of Peace and it is expected that the developed system will be handed over to INVEA.'®8 Ethiopian passports are issued on the basis of the kebele ID and birth certificate (also obtained from the kebele administration). A standard passport costs 600 Birr, or USD15.19 Somalia Prior to 1991, all towns and districts of Somalia had authority to issue identity cards.'7° Up to 1973, these were in Italian in southern issued Somalia but in English in northern Somalia; after 1973 they were 167 1D4D Country Diagnostic: Ethiopia, World Bank, 2017 http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/822621524689442102/ID4D-Country-DiagnosticEthiopia.pdf. 168 Information from Ethiopia statelessness focal point, INVEA, July 2021, in comments on this draft report. 169 Information from the Immigration, Nationality and Immigration and Vital Events Agency website, https://www.ethiopianpassportservices. gov.et/#/Information 170 Documents in Somalia and Sudan, Landinfo (Country of Origin Information Centre), Oslo, 5 January 2009 hitp://citizenshiprightsafrica.org/documents-insomalia-and-sudan/ UNHCR — December 2021