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.
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