Cassadee Orinthia YAN International Comparative Jurisprudence. 2024, 10(1):94-111. compensation for the loss of their property, disruption of their community’s pastoral activities, and infringements on their rights to practice their religion and culture. In a similar case, the African Court on Human and People’s Rights firmly rejected the notion put forth by the respondent that cultural rights would diminish in significance due to cultural change. It decisively dismissed the respondent’s position that advocated for restricting minority rights for the common good. Indeed, the judges remained unconvinced by Kenya’s argument that the Ogiek, another indigenous group, had evolved to such an extent that their distinct cultural identity had been lost. As stated in the Court’s opinion, ‘[...] the Respondent has not sufficiently demonstrated that this alleged shift and transformation in the lifestyle of the Ogieks has entirely eliminated their cultural distinctiveness’ (African Commission on Human and People’s Rights v. Kenya (merits), 2017, p. 53). Similarly, the Endorois case holds immense significance in the context of citizenship rights in Kenya, underscoring the critical need to protect the cultural rights of minority communities and the imperative of addressing statelessness as a fundamental issue. Kenya is home to several groups of stateless individuals. Recently, progress has been made in granting citizenship to two of these groups. The first group consists of individuals who were rendered stateless by gender-discriminatory nationality laws. As written by Baird (2020), under the Constitution of Kenya, dating back to 12 December 1963 (and amended in 2008), although women could confer nationality to their children born in Kenya on an equal basis with men, if a child was born overseas, only a Kenyan father could confer nationality. Kenyan women who gave birth outside Kenya to a child with a non-Kenyan father were not able to transfer their nationality to their child. In practice, according to Baird (2020), this discriminatory approach to citizenship for children born outside Kenya ‘contributed to discriminatory attitudes and restrictions on the transmission of nationality by women who gave birth inside Kenya’. Furthermore, the 2010 Constitution introduced provisions allowing dual nationality, overturning the previous prohibition. Despite this constitutional amendment, practical barriers remain. These include a chronic ‘lack of awareness of the new law among both potential beneficiaries and officials tasked with the implementation of the law’ (van Waas et al., 2019, p. 198). 4. The legal framework in Kenya 4.1. The Registration of Persons Act of 2012 This is the most recent law in Kenya regarding citizenship and the rights of stateless people. The Act introduced a new digital system called the National Integrated Identification Management System (NIMS). This system was meant to be a single source of information for all Kenyans and foreigners in the country, and was therefore meant to include all persons resident in Kenya. The enactment of this law faced opposition from various human rights forums and like-minded individuals and institutions, with opponents arguing that it was in violation of the Constitution and in bad faith. The primary question concerned the safety of the data that could be collected and the assurance of the safety of the data under NIMS. The Act is crucial and material in the protection of data safety; however, the exclusivity of the data that the act requires is questionable in light of the fundamental rights of a human being. These rights include the right to privacy, the dignity of a person, the right to equality, and nondiscrimination. This is based on the type of information that the act prescribed should be collected: identity cards, refugee cards, foreigner certificates, and several personal documents. This leaves open the question of whether people who lack such identifiable rights would be discriminated against in accessing government services, and thus remain stateless. 104