The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, Women and Digital ID in Kenya: A Decolonial Perspective

Abstract Inspired by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the international development community is driving digital ID programmes in low and middle income countries (LMICs) such as Kenya. Kenya has had experience with state-issued identity registration such as that proposed in digital ID programmes for over a century. Identity registration has gendered impacts, stemming from the historical exclusion of women in the system, lack of recognition of their contribution to new uses of the system, as well as lack of engagement with women regarding remedies. Digital ID risks continuing and exacerbating these injustices, as it is based on the existing system. This article uses the ‘protect, respect, remedy’ framework of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to analyse how decolonial approaches could be applied in digital ID to untangle it from colonial legacies, check the ever-increasing power of businesses involved in digital ID systems, and broaden intersectional understanding of human rights.