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This series was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) fellowship.
In October 2023, Farrah Budhul Uleh wheeled himself to the Huduma Centre in Garissa, a government facility that offers citizens access to various services. At the designated counter, Uleh explained to the official that he had lost his Kenyan national identity card (ID) but had memorised the number, the unique identifier with which the government could verify his identity in Kenya’s national civil registry.
The official asked him to first fill out a Police Abstract, a standard requirement for the replacement of a Kenyan ID. This done, Uleh’s fingerprints were taken, his face was photographed and he was provided with a temporary identification document while waiting for his replacement ID to be processed.
Later that month, the Kenyan Somali wheeled himself back to the Garissa Huduma Centre to collect his ID. What happened next stunned Uleh, the father of eight: an official informed him that his ID had been revoked because his fingerprints were found in the refugee biometric database.
Uleh narrated his story on a suffocatingly hot day in April 2024.
Wearing a white T-shirt and a checked cloth tied around his waist, Uleh sat on his makeshift wheelchair under a small neem tree outside his home in Iftin Ward, in the Garissa Township constituency of Garissa County, about 500 kilometres to the north-east of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, and just 80 kilometres from the border with Somalia.
Fleeing home
Uleh traces the family’s troubles back to 2009.
In May of that year, he had sat on his makeshift wheelchair, deeply pondering the complex dilemma before him. His family was in a highly precarious place; the 42-year-old was the head of a family of eleven members now on the verge of starvation: his wife, his seven underage children, three of whom were disabled, two nephews, and an in-law.
Five months earlier, the government had declared the ongoing drought and the resulting famine a national disaster and had joined efforts with the World Food Programme (WFP) to distribute relief food to 1.4 million Kenyans.
A US$406 million aid appeal to feed 10 million people on the verge of starvation was launched by the government.
“These people will not be able to meet their minimum food requirements between now and the end of August 2009 without emergency measures,” the late President Mwai Kibaki described the grave situation to foreign donors gathered at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC).
The country was just recovering from the 2007/2008 post-election chaos that had left over 1,000 people dead countrywide and hectares of crops abandoned as thousands of farmers fled from Kenya’s “bread basket” regions.
As the country battled the severe drought that had struck in 2008 and the ensuing famine, Kenyans from northern Kenya and the Rift Valley – the worst-hit areas – ate wild fruits, some poisonous, to survive.
Uleh made the resolve that Dadaab, a complex of three camps comprising Hagadera, Ifo, and Dagahaley, some 176.2 kilometres away from their home in Balambala constituency in Garissa County, was their last resort. The three camps are located in Fafi and Dadaab constituencies in Garissa County.
Dadaab was built in 1991 in Garissa as a safe haven for at least 90,000 Somali refugees. Between 2008 and 2011, there was a major influx of refugees escaping conflicts and droughts in Somalia. In 2011, Dadaab was the world’s largest refugee camp, sheltering an estimated 460,000 refugees, the majority being of Somali ethnicity.
Many double registered persons registered themselves as refugees after losing their livestock – camels, goats, sheep, and cattle – explained Ahmed Rashid. Kenyan Somalis, who are mainly Muslim and traditionally pastoralists, were left with no option, said Rashid, a programme officer at Pastoralists Rights and Advocacy Network (PARANET), an advocacy group fighting for the rights of marginalised communities in Wajir County.
Double registered persons in Wajir and Garissa narrated to The Elephant how they were lumped together with goats in the backs of vehicles, walked, or rode donkeys to reach the refugee camps closest to their homes. Poor, some disabled, others battling ill health, widows with dependent children, youth hungry for education opportunities or attracted by the allure of resettlement possibilities, they all flocked to the refugee camps erected to shelter refugees fleeing war in their countries.
Many of the double registered were minors who had been registered by their parents, relatives, or neighbours in order to increase the family size and receive more food rations. In some cases, minors were stolen or registered without their parents’ consent.
Experts say it’s hard to blame the Kenyan Somalis.
Sources explained that, back in the 1990s and early 2000s, the camps offered better basic services, including better healthcare and education, which were not offered by the government. This attracted Kenyans to register as refugees. In those days, sources said, refugees also used to receive large portions of rations twice a month and in the villages word spread like wildfire; there was “free food” in the refugee camps.
Fingerprinting
Records show that the Ulehs arrived at the registration desk at Dadaab on 17 May 2009.
Behind a computer sat an employee of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) asking questions about applicants’ backgrounds and their reasons for fleeing their country. The official collected biographical data like name, date of birth, clan affiliation, work experience, and hometown, and took facial photos and fingerprints.
As the custodian of refugee affairs and the camp, the UNHCR was in charge of registration and conducting RSD (Refugee Determination Status).
Uleh told The Elephant that, when asked where the family was from, he fabricated the family’s story and biographies. “I did not mention that I came from Kenya because they were only receiving people coming from our neighbouring country Somalia.” According to UNHCR records, Uleh, who had never set foot in Somalia, said that they had fled clashes in Barawa District in the Lower Shabelle region in Southern Somalia.
Other sources interviewed also said they too had cooked up similar stories. For some, no questions were asked at all. However, this investigation found that to receive aid, all had to submit their fingerprints and have their facial photos taken.
According to the UNHCR website, the biometrics of each Somali asylum seeker and their family were collected by the government. The website suggests that these fingerprints were cross-matched with Kenya’s national registration database and checked against the UNHCR refugee database to prevent false claims. The new security measure was aimed at curbing false asylum claims after it was discovered that Kenyan citizens, especially Kenyan Somalis, were misrepresenting themselves as refugees, while some Somali refugees who had already been registered posed as new arrivals to claim additional rations.
“Our system will be able to pick up matching fingerprints. When there is a match, it means that the person has previously been registered as a Kenyan,” a Kenyan official said in 2006. He added that the National Registration Bureau would also check the prints against a UNHCR database of persons registered as refugees. However, the sources The Elephant spoke to were unaware of the practice and said they had only been registered by UNHCR.
In an email exchange with Human Rights Watch in 2009, the year the Ulehs arrived in Dadaab, UNHCR stated that during the registration in 2008-2009, there was cross-referencing of biometrics with Kenya’s national database to prevent Kenyan citizens from obtaining refugee status. Despite this, Uleh was able to register himself as a refugee. How this happened is unclear, but Uleh—more concerned with resettlement in a third country—told The Elephant that he kept his ID card “separately” (hidden) during registration because “if you get a resettlement and you are found with an ID card, your process will not go through.”
Responding to questions from The Elephant, in her official statement, UNHCR Communications Officer and Spokesperson Faith Kasina said that there was no crossmatching of refugee fingerprints during registration. The Elephant later sent additional questions regarding the UNHCR news article and HRW report describing cross-referencing of biometric data. By time of publication, UNHCR had not responded, and the Government of Kenya had also been sent the questions.
After registration, Uleh – who was the head of the household – was issued with a food ration card, a manifest (family biographies with photos), and later, a refugee ID (alien card). Without these documents, refugees couldn’t access any type of aid – food, shelter, medical, or other assistance.
The Elephant found that, until at least May 2025, Uleh had continued to benefit from aid, including receiving Bamba Chakula, a mobile cash-transfer food voucher introduced by the World Food Programme (WFP) in partnership with Kenya’s largest mobile network operator, Safaricom, and integrated into the Profile Global Registration System (proGres) used by the UNHCR to register, store, and manage refugees’ biographical and biometric data.
Uleh renewed his alien/refugee ID card in 2015. Printed in bold blue letters on the ID, which expired in 2020, are the words “REPUBLIC OF KENYA REFUGEE ID CARD. Full name: Salat Dahir Aden. Place of birth: Somalia. Nationality: Somali. Place of issue: Hagadera.”
Uleh’s son Masud was 14 years old when the family registered as refugees. Like his father, Masud is disabled and wears blue flip-flops on his hands to move around. He had had dreams of what he would do after high school. “Get an ID, go to college or university. Look for a job,” is what he had planned to do, he told The Elephant. “But my dream became invalid… because I was a double registered victim,” he said in April 2024.
Masud remembers applying for an ID twice in 2018 when he was 23 years old. His application was rejected both times and for years he had doors slammed in his face; the missed opportunities made his blood boil. Masud had studied for a diploma in Communication Technology and, in 2021, was allowed to register to sit for his exams using his birth certificate. Masud alleges he had stood a good chance of becoming a Member of the County Assembly (MCA) in the 2022 general election but those hopes were dashed; his birth certificate would not suffice for Masud to be registered to vie for the seat.
Masud finally received his ID in June 2023 after working with community-based paralegals and organisations such as Haki na Sheria and Namati which helped double registered persons to advocate for their rights. Masud now works as a taxi driver using a car adapted to his handicap.
“Now I can assure you that I am 100 per cent Kenyan,” Masud said in April 2024, his face lighting up. He said that before he had felt as if he was only 10 per cent Kenyan, that he could at any time be “removed out of the country because I’m not a ‘Kenyan’”, that he could be deported.
With an ID, Masud can now go anywhere in the country. “I can travel anytime I want. Even at 2 a.m., call me in Nairobi and I will come,” he told the reporter during a phone call in May 2025. Previously, he’d travelled to Nairobi only twice, by private means both times. The first time was in the company of his cousin, a policeman, which meant that he did not have to produce an ID. The second time he says he lied that his ID was in his travel bag in the boot of the car he was travelling in.
In the same month that Masud received his ID, his youngest brother, who had made his application in January 2023 (the family asked for his real name not to be revealed), also received his. It was a joyous period for the Ulehs.
In August 2023, Masud’s youngest brother joined the military. The family’s future was looking promising, or so they thought. Then Uleh visited the Huduma Centre in October 2023 and received the news that his ID had been revoked. The news weighed heavily on the family; his two now nervous sons had used their parents’ IDs as primary supporting documents to acquire their own IDs as required by law. “If I want to use his ID card to apply for a passport, I think it will be a problem, won’t it?” Masud asked the reporter in 2024. This is very sad for me, he said.
For the family, the revocation of Uleh’s ID was puzzling.
“All the family members were in the UNHCR’s database,” said Uleh, “But only three of us – I, my first-born and third-born – were the people who were affected,” he said pointing at Masud. He said his mother had successfully replaced her lost ID in 2023.
The only boy in a family of four girls, Uleh attended Garissa Primary School before proceeding to County High School. He told The Elephant that he obtained his first Kenyan ID card in Balambala in 1988, aged 21. It was also in Balambala that he met his wife, got married and had seven children. Uleh said that their eighth and last child was born in the Hagadera refugee camp, which is part of the Dadaab Refugee Complex.
“I am a Kenyan citizen. I was born in Kenya. I am known by everybody that I was born in Kenya,” the 59-year-old Uleh fiercely defended his citizenship claim during his interview with The Elephant as he slid his Kenyan National Identity Card (ID) (reissued in 1996 in Balambala Constituency in Garissa County) into the hand of the reporter. To find out if their fingerprints were recorded in the proGres database, double registered persons like Uleh would lie to officials at the Huduma Centre that they had lost their IDs.
“If they had told my father, ‘If we capture your child’s fingerprints, he won’t get an ID’, he wouldn’t have registered.” Masud said that his father had told him this severally.
A flicker of pain crossed Uleh’s face and wrinkles formed at the corners of his eyes as he reflected on what it meant to be a Kenyan without an ID.
The Elephant asked Uleh if the UNHCR had asked for their consent before collecting the family’s data or whether they were told why the information was being collected. He replied in the negative, saying that the only information required of them was where they were from.
“They should have given people full information,” Masud said, “Clear and simple.”
The Elephant found that although Uleh was told his ID had been revoked, this is actually a case of prolonged administrative deactivation. This is a common misunderstanding, as officials often use the terms interchangeably. A deactivated ID cannot be used for any official purpose and is effectively a useless document, leaving double-registered individuals in administrative limbo for years, unable to function as full citizens.
Bobby Mkangi, who served on the Committee of Experts on Constitutional Review (CoE) that delivered the Constitution of Kenya 2010, says, “If they [Uleh and his family] were original Kenyan citizens, their citizenship, hence IDs, can’t be revoked.” The human rights activist and lawyer adds, “Beyond, the constitution also allows for dual citizenship and registering as a refugee, as fraudulent as it might be, is neither denunciation nor acquisition of citizenship.”
Victor Nyamori, a human rights lawyer, migrant expert and researcher with Amnesty International Kenya, found the Uleh case “very absurd”. “Citizenship is something you gain by connection to the soil,” he says. It cannot be taken away on a whim. Nyamori observes that Kenyans’ citizenship rights are anchored in and protected by the constitution. For citizenship to be revoked requires a judicial process that includes written notice of the intent to revoke, the right to legal counsel to defend one’s citizenship, and the right to appeal.
Uleh and Masud posed for a photo behind their makeshift kitchen after speaking to The Elephant. Dressed in a black Andrew Avengers tee-shirt with a cancer ribbon, Masud managed to flash a smile.
“What I am appealing and requesting is that I should get my national identity card as a Kenyan back as normal,” said a jobless and remorseful Uleh in April 2024.
Security vetting committees
To restore his official recognition as a citizen and be issued with an ID, Uleh stood before a security vetting committee at the Government Guest House in Garissa in June 2024, just two months after this reporter visited his home.
According to the double registered persons vetting programme obtained by The Elephant, Uleh was among 4,132 people in Garissa scheduled to undergo security vetting between 19 May and 10 June 2024. A similar exercise took place in Wajir County in the same period.
Uleh finally received his ID in August 2025, more than a year later. The Maisha card, the third generation Kenya ID, will expire in 2035.
On 21 January 2025, the High Court in Garissa had ruled the refusal by the government to deregister from the proGres records vetted and verified/certified Kenyan citizens as unconstitutional and an infringement of their rights.
The court ordered their deregistration “with immediate effect”, and the issuance of registration and citizenship documents like IDs, passports and birth certificates within 60 days. Being Kenyan citizens by birth, they were entitled to the rights and privileges that come with being a citizen, including nationality and citizenship identity documents.
The court also ordered vetting committees to be constituted or reactivated within 60 days to vet the remaining persons without further delay “and report back to the court of the progress within a period of six months”.
The Elephant submitted questions regarding this investigation to the office of the Attorney General, the Ministry of Interior and its departments — the National Registration Bureau (NRB) and the Department of Refugee Services (DRS) – but had not received a reply at the time of publication.
“The government has not complied with the 60-day timeframe for vetting double-registered persons, as – based on the information available to us – no such vetting exercises were carried out during that period,” Haki na Sheria told The Elephant in January 2026. The organisation, however, added that the government had initiated limited vetting exercises in Dadaab and in the Masalani area in October 2025 (that were still ongoing in January) but “we do not have figures indicating how many individuals have been deregistered”
“The exercise appears, to the best of our knowledge, to have been conducted on a relatively small scale. Notably, no vetting activities were undertaken in locations such as Wajir, Turkana, Nairobi, or Isiolo, where significant numbers of double registered persons reside. Moreover, the government did not issue direct communication to affected individuals; instead, it relied solely on an open public announcement.”
The UNHCR told The Elephant that over the years, the agency has conducted verification exercises jointly with the government to ensure that Kenyan citizens were vetted and removed from the proGres database so that they could enjoy their rights fully as Kenyan citizens. “UNHCR has successfully advocated with the Government of Kenya to ensure that Kenyans who have registered as refugees are not prosecuted,” the agency said. According to the agency, it helped remove at least 12,000 Kenyans from the proGres database.
In Kenya it is impossible for one to exercise their citizenship rights and freedoms without an ID. One cannot open a bank account or register a sim card in order to use M-PESA, enrol in school, seek formal employment, vote, marry, move freely, or own property. Women may find themselves forced to give birth at home.
“Without an ID you can’t get any government service, can’t travel, can’t get a job,” says Masud, asking, “Who are you here in Kenya?”
In his ruling, Justice John Ongiego, criticised the government for failing to provide basic services for its citizens, saying that double registered persons had been “forced to seek refugee status in their own country because of survival”. Justice Ongiego added that lying and faking refugee status alone cannot be sufficient grounds for one to lose their citizenship or be declared stateless.
The court was responding to a suit filed in 2021 against government agencies and officials including the Attorney General, the Cabinet Secretary for the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government, the Director of the National Bureau of Registration of Persons (issuer of IDs), and the Commission for Refugee Affairs. The UNHCR, which enjoys immunity from national jurisdictions and therefore did not participate in the suit, was listed as the fifth respondent.
The suit was filed by three double registered persons (including one interviewed for this report) and Haki na Sheria, a Garissa-based grassroots organisation working in northern Kenya to tackle systemic discrimination and promote the rights of marginalised communities.
Filing on their behalf and also on behalf of 14,762 other double registered persons from Garissa County and 4,952 from Wajir County, the plaintiffs argued that denying them IDs had left them de facto stateless. According to the suit, at least 40,000 Kenyans were registered in the proGres database as refugees.
In November 2019, members of the group were subjected to a security vetting procedure. Not all were successful; those who were, told The Elephant that they received their IDs between 2022 and 2023. Those vetted in 2024 were issued with IDs in 2025.
The lack of progress and delays criticised by both the court and experts is at odds with the Fair Administrative Action Act that states that every person has the right to administrative action that is expeditious, efficient, lawful, reasonable, and procedurally fair. The Act also foresees that reasons for inaction or explanations for decisions taken should be provided in writing.
Story editing by Betty Guchu.
