Between 2018 and 2023, HSI’s paralegals have assisted 8600 locals to acquire birth certificates and 2605 identification cards. .
In Northern Kenya, marginalized communities face systemic exclusion from basic rights and services due to a complex network of historical, social, and bureaucratic barriers and injustices. Despite constitutional guarantees, many citizens in this region continue to be denied essential official documentation, such as national ID cards, birth certificates, and marriage certificates. This exclusion is rooted in a long history of discrimination, traceable to the colonial era when the British administration intentionally left the region’s pastoralist Somali communities outside the formal state systems.
In the modern context, this legacy of exclusion is compounded by a range of challenges: an onerous and opaque registration process, limited access to registration offices, the high cost of obtaining documents, and complex, discriminatory bureaucratic hurdles, such as vetting, that continue to deny communities the opportunity to claim their identity and citizenship rights.
In addition, Kenya’s recent move to digitize the national ID system through the “Maisha Namba” system has created new obstacles, with many individuals unable to access the digital platforms required to register or else prevented from participating because they do not have the prior, second-generation ID, or lack sufficient information.
This is especially true for those without foundational documents, such as “double registered” people who are wrongly classified as refugees and denied a national ID card- particularly in counties like Garissa, home to the Dadaab refugee complex, where thousands of Somali citizens are at risk of statelessness.
As a result of these challenges, marginalized communities in Northern Kenya are unable to access essential services, vote, participate in governance, or claim their full rights under the law. This leaves them vulnerable to exploitation, disenfranchisement, and continued oppression.
Future Priorities
By December 2025, we will conduct monthly community outreach sessions in at least 10 locations across Garissa County, led by our trained paralegal network, to raise awareness of legal rights and identity documentation processes.
Each paralegal will receive quarterly training and updated resource materials, including brochures for community distribution, presentation resources, and further down the line the capacity to deliver a new SMS/WhatsApp advice service developed in our new digital innovation hub on- site in Garissa (see Output 1.6), to support at least 30 individuals per paralegal per month, ensuring they can effectively assist with navigating registration systems.
Paralegals will host two radio shows per month and post three times a week across our social media (Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn) to build a social movement and sustained understanding amongst community member on their identity-related rights.
By June 2026, we will establish formal collaboration frameworks with at least 5 new local authorities or institutions making one visit per month per area (e.g., county registrars, schools, and hospitals) to reduce registration time by 30%, support with county infrastructure development through petitioning, and advocate for two new policy reforms that enhance equitable access to legal identity documentation.
By end of 2025, we will initiate or strengthen at least 4 strategic litigation cases challenging discriminatory practices in documentation access. We will collect and submit testimonies from 20 affected individuals to reinforce these cases and influence changes in at least one national and one county-level policy.
By March 2026, we will roll out a digital literacy campaign reaching 2,000 individuals in marginalized communities to support digital ID registration access. In parallel, we will publish two policy briefs on data protection concerns and advocate for amendments to at least one data privacy law relevant to identity registration systems, in line with our goals set out under Strategic Objective Three, Output 3.4.
From 2025 to 2027, we will actively participate in and contribute to the Coalition on Nationality, Citizenship, and Statelessness (CONCISE) and Global Coalition on Digital ID, facilitating biannual strategy meetings and co- leading three national advocacy campaigns that amplify community voices and push for systemic reforms to citizenship rights and access to justice. Our contributions to community-led movements will be support by our commitments to hosting radio shows and social media campaigns as outlined in Output 1.1.
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