Legal Identification Documents

This paper explores how a new hierarchy of legal Identification Documents (IDs) in Uganda, topped by the National Identification Document (NID), interchangeably referred to as the national identity card, Endanga-Muntu, or a national ID in this paper, has diminished the value of a wider range of forms of recognition. It also examines how this new hierarchy has generated structural discrimination and escalated selective inequalities among differentiated citizens, leading to disenfranchisement. Using a case of the ghetto youths in Kampala slums of Kamwokya and Bwaise, this paper argues that the range of legal IDs within Uganda’s overall national registration ecosystem over time have included multiple and overlapping identification mechanisms, such as birth registration cards, local council village cards, residence IDs, baptism cards, voter’s card, tax payment slip, driver’s license, citizens’ passport, written A4 paper letters, marriage certificates, and others, acceptable in various formal and informal spaces until the recent introduction of a NID which manifests both as a threat and an opportunity to the ghetto youths.