Biometric national ID deployed in South Sudan
Information Certainty: Documented
Deployment Purpose: Voter & ID Registration, Refugee Identification
| Summary |
|---|
| Since 2012, South Sudan's Department of Civil Registry, Nationality, Passports and Immigration (DCRNPI) has been deploying a biometric national ID. The biometric data collected includes fingerprint and iris scans. A 'German company' is supposedly the supplier. Since 2013, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has provided assistance in the rollout, to this day it carries out the registration of displaced persons in refugee camps for the ID. Academic researchers show that despite the fanfare surrounding the deployment of the national ID, in practice it does not mark a profound shift in the bureaucratic identity management of the state, which aims to preserve the status of the military elite. The UNHCR's role has also been critiqued as the collection of biometric data in humanitarian contexts may represent a new form of intervention with as yet untold consequences for the people whose data is collected. This is because of the potential of such data to 'travel' and be acted upon in other security realms, which is particularly likely in a context like South Sudan where the collection process is a combined state/aid agency effort. In addition to this, in 2019 the United Nations World Food Programme, who works closely with the UNHCR in South Sudan, shared their biometric database for food provision in South Sudan with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). It can be speculated that because the rollout of the national ID is implicated with aid provision that data from these collection efforts may be being shared with the other UN bodies. |
Products and Institutions:
| Product Deployed | |
|---|---|
| Institutions ⠉ | |
| Datasets | Unknown Dataset 0176 |
| Search software |
Status and Events:
| Status | Ongoing |
|---|---|
| Events | Start (2 January 2012, Documented, , No description) |
| Start Date | |
| End Date |
Users:
Location:
| City | Juba |
|---|---|
| Country ⠉ | South Sudan |
Description[ ]
Uncertain information: Involved Entities
- Involved Entities: United Nations World Food Programme (Information Certainty: Speculative,Description: Sharing of datat)
- Citation keyThis property is a special property in this wiki.: burtIOMWFPShare2019
In January 2012, South Sudan began rolling out a biometric national ID. Since around 2013, the UNHCR has assisted with the process. The biometric collection includes fingerprint and iris scans.
Academic researchers argue that the deployment of the ID, despite its modernist discourse, does not represent a profound shift in the way citizenship is negotiated in the country. The following is based on year long fieldwork in South Sudan in 2013 after the ID was introduced.
This article argues that South Sudan introduced biometrics to convey an image of a “non-failed” state to the international community, while effectively doubling the bureaucracy to keep all important decisions about inclusion and exclusion in the hands of the military elites 1
South Sudanese therefore experience inclusion—or citizenship—as a successful negotiation with state agents, usually in military uniform. However, this inclusion is a momentary situation that may be renegotiated later. The paper issued by the citizenship office—the ultramodern, infallible national identity cards and electronic passports—are not seen as final and decisive documents. They are, just like earlier governmental papers in South Sudanese history, useful and powerful tools in future renegotiations over someone’s worthiness for a service. This is why people keep all previous papers—from chiefs’ support letters to referendum registration cards, from UNHCR aid records to blood test results 1
The deployment of the national ID has been assisted along the way by the UNHCR, who also deploy their own form of biometric registration in the camps for 'aid' purposes. South Sudan experiences a great number of internally displaced people and high numbers of people returning to the country after being displaced.
Since 2013, UNHCR has been working with South Sudan’s Department of Civil Registry, Nationality, Passports and Immigration (DCRNPI) to issue National ID cards, with particular emphasis on taking registration efforts to distant areas where people are at greatest risk of statelessness. So far, some 15,000 people have benefited from this service 3
In 2022, the UNHCR registered refugees in camps, in order to provide them with the national ID.
In May, it dispatched a mobile registration team in all-terrain vehicles to Raja to take registration to the 2,000 returnees and internally displaced people that the DCRNPI determined are in danger of slipping through the cracks, Staff brought generators to power up a photo printer, laptops and biometric iris and fingerprint scanners. And with NGO partner Hold the Child, they ensured that local chiefs and other trusted witnesses were on hand 3
Researchers have argued that the UNHCR's role in rollouts in contexts like South Sudan should not be viewed ambiguously as shared data may have unforeseen (in)security consequences. This researcher lists an unnamed 'German company' as the provider.
When revisiting the UNHCR’s use of biometrics through a conception of technology as having constitutive capacity, and when viewing the UNHCR as a component part of a larger assemblage of intervention, the assumption that biometric benefits will translate into improved refugee protection must be challenged. When considering that the production of digitalized biometric refugee data is a technical procedure whereby new domains of life are rendered open to intervention, the UNHCR’s relation to other component parts of the assemblage becomes a crucial factor in demarcating the extent to which this digitalized refugee body is also intervenable outside of a humanitarian context 2
In 2019, data between the UN World Food Programme and the UN International Organisation for Migration was shared in South Sudan.
An exchange of biometric information between the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has been completed to update the profiles of tens of thousand of people receiving aid in South Sudan. The information sharing, which is the first of its kind, according to Africa News, was completed under an agreement signed in 2018, and sees information from IOM’s BRaVE and WFP’s SCOPE systems integrated. The synchronization is intended to improve the efficiency of aid delivery to people in the Upper Nile and Jonglei regions, and to cut down on the need for manual data collection 4
References
- ^ x
- a b Markó, Ferenc David. “We Are Not a Failed State, We Make the Best Passports”: South Sudan and Biometric Modernity. , 2016.
- a b "South Sudan: Helping to secure a future, one National ID card at a time : Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative". (2022) <http://citizenshiprightsafrica.org/south-sudan-helping-to-secure-a-future-one-national-id-card-at-a-time/> Accessed: 2022-12-14
- ^ Jacobsen, Katja Lindskov. On Humanitarian Refugee Biometrics and New Forms of Intervention. , 2017.
- ^ "{IOM and WFP share biometric data to improve efficiency of aid in South Sudan".