Nubian Rights Forum & 2 others v Attorney General & 6 others; Child Welfare Society & 9 others (Interested Parties) [2020] eKLR and practice. According to Mr. Kegoro, Article 94 (6) of the Constitution decrees that every Act of Parliament that confers on any State organ, State officer or person the authority to make provisions having the force of law in Kenya shall expressly specify the purpose and objectives for which that authority is conferred, the limits of the authority, the nature and scope of the law that may be made, and the principles and standards applicable to the law made under the authority. 180. He averred that the impugned amendments in this case are mired in generalities and ambiguities; that they essentially grant the relevant Cabinet and Principal Secretaries extensive powers to gather personal information and to make regulations with regard thereto without substantive framework limitations as to what information gathered may be used for or the principles and standards that should be applied in the exercise of the said powers. 181. Further, that the amendments introduce a weaker yet similar system as was established under the Kenya Citizens and Foreign National’s Management Service Act No. 12 of 2012. He averred that as both laws are in operation on the same issue, without transitional provisions or interoperability modalities, there is currently confusion and ambiguity that may be exploited at the expense of the people. The net effect of this confusion is that the personal information of citizens is exposed to serious risk of abuse without accountability. 182. Mr. Kegoro averred that the danger to personal data that he expounds upon above is compounded by the lack of a policy and legal framework for privacy and data protection in Kenya, which implies that the State will have a carte blanche as to what and how to utilize personal information for. According to Mr. Kegoro, the impugned amendments are susceptible to abuse and fall far short of the UN Principles on Personal Data Protection and Privacy, the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection as well as comparable laws from other jurisdictions on limitations to the right to privacy. 183. He averred that if indeed the only purpose of the impugned amendments is to harmonise registration and identification of persons for efficient service delivery by the State, the flaws in the legislation render them unreasonable relative to their intended purpose. 184. It was Mr. Kegoro’s contention that given the nature and scope of the rights in question, operationalising the impugned amendments will effectively amount to a repeal of substantive fundamental rights protected under the Bill of Rights, thereby exposing citizens to whimsical and unreasonable intrusions into their privacy by the State without their consent. 185. The 2nd Petitioner takes the position that the impugned law is unconstitutional for failure to involve the Senate in its enactment. Mr. Kegoro deposed to this effect in his Further and Supplementary Affidavit sworn on 12th April 2019. He placed reliance on Article 96 as read with Article 110 of the Constitution which he stated provides that any law that affects the functions and powers of county governments set out in the Fourth Schedule ought to be approved and passed by the Senate. He averred that in light of the admission by the Respondents that NIIMS will be used for statistics and planning, which is clearly a shared role between the national and county governments, the impugned law was accordingly unconstitutional as it was not approved by the Senate. 186. Mr. Kegoro further averred that the impugned amendments seek to register children as well as adults. This was clearly contrary to the Act which, at section 2, limited the application of the Act to citizens of Kenya who have attained the age of eighteen years or are of the apparent age of eighteen years or over. He contended that as the restriction in this section had not been amended by the impugned Act, its application to children, refugees and all other non-citizens or persons whose citizenship is undetermined, including stateless persons and persons at risk of statelessness, is illegal or ultra vires. He observed that the Director of the National Registration Bureau had, in his replying affidavit sworn on 21st February 2019 clearly stated that the national registration authority has a mandate to collect and keep a register of Kenyan citizens above the age of 18 only. http://www.kenyalaw.org - Page 28/174