Cassadee Orinthia YAN
International Comparative Jurisprudence. 2024, 10(1):94-111.
up residing in Kibera, Nairobi. Issues regarding their nationality were never resolved by the British government or
the post-colonial Kenyan government. Members of the community were denied identification documents as well
as political participation rights, and the same discriminatory and exclusive actions regarding their citizenship rights
still apply today. The case was frustrated at the high court in Kenya on the grounds of procedure and on substantive
grounds.
The frustration of this case was based on the exclusivity of Kenyan laws, as can be seen from the rules of civil
procedure. After its institution in the high court in 2003, the case was objected to on grounds of administration and
based on establishing the legality or capacity of the complainants. Secondly, in terms of the administrative powers
of the court, high court judges lacked the capacity to address the matter since there had not been a response to
correspondence sent to the chief justice on the administration of the case.
Other frustrations were met on substantive grounds, including that the constitution at the time only provided for
individual rights and failed to provide for collective rights. Therefore, the grievances raised by the community did
not have a remedy in law since they were group rights. In 2006, the case was brought to the African Commission,
having failed in the Kenyan judicial system after the high court found the application to lack foundation under
Kenyan law.
Ultimately, the Nubian case failed in the Kenyan courts due to the failure of the Constitution as it existed then to
acknowledge cultural, social, and economic rights. These rights have since been recognized and established under
Article 43 of the Constitution of Kenya (Songa, 2021, p. 258). The African Commission held that the Kenyan
judicial system had violated various rights under the African Charter, including freedom from discrimination under
Article 2, equal protection of the law, and equality under Article 3. Kenya had also breached Article 14, which
provides for the right to property. The Commission held that the rights conferred to the Nubian community to use
land in Kibera were sufficient to allow Nubians to hold property in Kenya; it was sufficient that the land was
communal land, not government land. The African Commission held Kenya liable for subjecting the Nubian
community to an arbitrary vetting process that lacked foundation in Kenyan law and for subjecting the community
to marginalization, which was irrational and unjustifiable. In regards to identification documents, the Kenyan
government was held liable for infringing the following rights of Nubian community members: movement,
participation in political processes, work, education, protection of the family, and protection of vulnerable groups.
The second case related to statelessness in Kenya was the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa
and the Open Society Justice Initiative on behalf of children of Nubian descent in Kenya v. Kenya. The case was
brought before the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of Children of Nubian descent. The
case was founded on the prejudice that Nubian parents experienced regarding the right to nationality for their
children, a situation created by the exclusivity and discrimination of the laws of Kenya. Parents had difficulty
obtaining birth certificates at birth, and Kenyan law also provides that a birth certificate is not proof of citizenship
(Songa, 2021, p. 259). Since birth is not automatically a qualification for citizenship, there were additional
requirements such as descent – at least one parent must be a qualified Kenyan citizen. This meant that the Nubian
children also had to undergo a vetting process to attain citizenship. These acts and laws violated Article 6 of the
African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990); the state was also found to have violated Article 3
of the same Charter in that the vetting process had failed to meet legitimate expectations and eroded the dignity of
the Nubian children. Other rights the state was found to have violated include the right to health and the right to
education. The Committee also set out several remedial measures, including requiring the Kenyan state to institute
legislative and administrative strategies for ensuring that Nubian children who had been rendered stateless could
attain citizenship. The legislation was thus to ensure that any discriminatory provision of the law was amended.
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