YEMENIZING AFRICAN REFUGEES THROUGH ELECTION CARDS

By: Saba Reportage Management

Translated by: Saba Staff

Edited by: Mahmoud Assamiee

SANA'A, March 21 (Saba) - Election fraud has been negatively
reflected in Yemen's security as hundreds of African refugees,
mostly Somalis are roaming around the country with Yemeni IDs or
election cards.

They exist near restaurants and in front of car parks offering their
services for only YR 300. They communicate in costal languages
Yemenis do not understand. When they talk to Yemenis, they use
Yemeni dialects, Taizi, Sana'ani and Tehami. The listener would
not doubt their Yemeni identities. However they have Yemeni IDs,
Yemeni family names, but after investigation you find out they are
African refugees who get a suitable living opportunity in Yemen.

Yemeni with Somali dialect

An African refugee is tiring himself to speak in a Yemeni dialect.
Another one works in sheikh's farm belongs to Yemeni tribe who got
the Yemeni nationality after getting the ID card. There are hundreds
African refugees who got the IDs illegally. Getting Yemeni IDs is
the dream of all the refugees because they want to be treated as
original Yemenis, especially after mastering the Sana'ani dialect.

An Ethiopian refugee said that he is collecting $500 to gain the
Yemeni ID to overcome the roadblocks and have a cell phone number.
As Yemenis fear any impact of buying phone numbers for Somalis, it
is difficult for them to mobile lines.

Some refugees could get the IDs because their own sheikh gathers
with a member of the parliament every Friday. "We were also behind
this member win for the 2003 parliamentary election in Yemen," they
claimed.

Election Card grants nationality

An Interior Ministry official who refused to mention his name said
that the main reason for Africans to get Yemen IDs, is the electoral
cards they got as a result of the competition among the political
parties. "These people are attracted and then get their names
belonged to known Yemeni families or tribes. Based on this, they got
the ID easily," he said.

He affirmed that the law stipulates that electoral card is one of
the important documents civil affairs authority depends on besides
other certificates to grant IDs.

When a Somali refugee who could not speak purely Arabic and insists
that he is from Hjjah province, came to al-Thawra police station in
the Capital Sana'a for ID, he was requested by the police station
to present his documents. He was ready with his electoral card,
neighborhoods' supervisor recommendation and ID copies of two
witnesses as identification documents to get his Yemeni ID.

As the concerned policeman wanted to stop the process of granting
him the ID, his co-worker rejected that saying there is no excuse to
stop or delay it because he has all the required documents and it's
the election committee's responsibility.

Police officers affirm that refugees can get IDs by giving bribes to
concerned officials. These bribes are ranging from USD 500-1000.
"Thousands of African refugees could obtain Yemeni IDs by bribing
the brokers who have relations with civil affairs investigations and
who in their turn allow the procedures to pass through," said a
police station's officer.

Many Africans had been arrested after finding out that they got IDs
illegally, a policeman affirmed, but he did not mention the number,
the place of their detention and the number of issues, whether
they were referred to justice or not.

An election committee chief in Hajjah province got surprised when he
discovered that the number of the registered people in the electoral
district is twice the population number.
If each electoral card would bring ID card, the identification card
fraud size would be too big in Yemen. So the Supreme Commission for
Election and Referendum is responsible to manage this fault. In
case of applying a law to grant electoral cards only to those who
have IDs and not the opposite ,that would deprive a huge number of
rural residences of voting to their candidates since most of them do
not have IDs or any other identification documents, the committee
officials clarified.

Revenge escape and dual employment

Not only election is the reason for forging the Yemeni ID nor do
Africans want to have it illegally, but also Yemenis who keen on
having more than one governmental job to get more than one salary a
month. Some others fear tribal revenge and others escape their
family names because they are related to this hated professions.

Criminals, terrorists and drug traffickers are also eager to have
IDs or passports with false data to mislead security authorities.
For instance a man from Sana'a and his sons got new IDs from Dhale'
province with unreal family names after murdering two people.

Yemeni migrants abroad are mostly seeking to play with personal data
while traveling abroad.

"Corrupt officers and managers help these people to travel to
European or American countries under forged names to ensure
residencies," said an official in civil status authority.

Forging goes beyond the IDs to the death certificate, for example a
girl wanted to obtain a death certificate for her mother who still
alive and works in a school to be appointed as a successor. Some
people forge the family cards by increasing the names of the family
members to attain the social insurance.

Inefficient treatment

Although the amendments of the manual ID card to the electronic one
took place, gaps are still there and a lot can change the data in
cooperation with the officials who are responsible to insert the
data, Civil Status Authority officials affirmed. According to them,
Interior Ministry's fees for the IDs increased through buying modern
computers which aim at joining civilians with electronic information
system which is hard to pass through.

"The aim of linking Yemeni citizens with information technology
system to ensure getting duplicated data of names, ages, places of
birth, jobs, family data has not been achieved," said this official.

He said that there are three complementary contracts that cost the
Interior Ministry millions of Yemeni Rials and the last contract
brought non erased information cards.

In recent years, while giving the local council's more powers to
perform their duties including employment some of them intended to
change people's personal data of those who came from other
provinces as they are from the original, IDs information as what
happened in Jawf, where some people got scholarships whereas they
are from other provinces.

Meanwhile, civil status departments have been opened in every
province in Yemen including governorate centers and the districts
related to them. These administrations duty is to record the
civilians' affairs such as (marriage, divorce, birth, death) and
other urgent incidents as issuing ID cards and family documents
according to law.

In recent Haj season and after the Endowment Ministry announced to
ban pilgrims over 70 years of Haj as a precaution measure of being
infected with H1N1. Some pilgrims changed their IDs and passports
data, especially their dates of birth, an Interior official said.

Data system has failed in Yemen because "each governmental authority
has different information of the same person," he added, explaining
all the governmental authorities to be tied to one developed data
system that at least includes the personal and the occupational
data.

Yemen's law has dealt with this issue as to jail those who have
more than one ID for no less than 6 months or paying YR 50 thousand
as a fine. The law stipulates on three years imprisonment and a fine
of YR 100,000 for those presented forged documents to the
authorities to facilitate gaining getting the ID or changing any
information."

Civil Status Authority in the Interior Ministry is the body in
charge of issuing IDs, Family Documents, Birth & Death Certificates
and other documents for Yemenis and non Yemenis. The authority head
Abu-Baker al-Amodi said that depending on the electoral card as
identification document is a violation which the issuing centers
take responsibility. The Authority would issue a generalization to
explain the confusion of this procedure in the issuing centers,
al-Amodi added.

The authority's legislation affairs director general Abdulaziz
al-Sa'afani said that the identification documents approved the
Ministry to gain the ID card is to bring the original birth
certificate, family card, witnesses ID copies besides the blood test
sheet and two photos of the applicant, the neighborhood supervisor
recommendation.He also pointed out that it's too difficult to forge
an electronic ID except if the procedures will be done for one
person and taken the finger print of another one. A number of these
cases have been discovered and handled.

Electoral card would be demanded just because it's the official wide
speared document in Yemen, particularly in the countryside where,
many people do not have birth certificates or family cards.

Legislation Affairs

The General Manager of Legal Affairs in the Ministry of Legal
Affairs Abdullah Barakat said that item number 22 of the civil
status's law does not include the electoral card as one of the
identification documents that one could gain the ID or the passport
through.

People should firstly have IDs and through them they could obtain
electoral cards and not the opposite, he added. Nevertheless
electoral cards considered identifying documents to receive
remittances from exchange offices or any other facilities.

Law never contain all details and that leads each ministry to have
their own instructions and regulations which decided by the minister
to organize the work, as they contact directly with applicants and
that may violate the law without intention.

" There are instructions applied ( by concerned bodies) as taking
the electoral card as one prove besides two eyewitnesses,
especially after getting witnesses has become very easy for some
monies. Some of them present perjuries for only YR 1000," affirmed
Barakat.

The law drafts are changeable and can be amended to fulfill the
applicants' needs. The amendments also differ from a minister to
another, said General Manager of By-Law Legislation in the ministry
Mohammad al-Zorka.

In the electoral card case, Interior Ministry should estimate the
damage volume and change the law draft in a way that serves the
public interest. Officials in Legislation Ministry affirmed that not
having an ID is a disaster.

There is money …there is card

ID charge, which is specified by YR 965, is not enough for some
civil affairs branch officials as they force civilians to pay YR
3000-10000 for each applicant. Some people say that official
documents could be obtained easily illegally through bribes and
mediators.

Electronic IDs reduced fraud

Some people say that employees in the electronic issuing authority
got YR 20 illegally to check each ID data so the cost would reach to
YR 1300 in the main center and YR1500 in the branches.

The authority that was visited by a group from the Investigative
Department receives and checks information from 28 issuing center in
the Republic. If they discovered a 90% similarity in fingerprints,
pictures or any other data, they cease the ID.

One of the samples is a civilian who has two IDs one from Dhale'
province and the other from Lahj with different data but almost same
pictures so he was arrested and investigated as he admitted that he
wanted the other to have a work visa to a gulf country.

The general manager of Planning and Survey in the Civil Affairs
Authority, Yahya al- Sosowa affirmed that the manual ID card cease
reduced the fraud phenomenon pointing that the total number of the
issued electronic IDs for Yemenis last year reached to 400.000
cards.

endesck@sabanews.net
mahmoudassamiee@gmail.com