Greg Constantine

In the late 1800s, the British Army began incorporating soldiers from the Nuba Mountains in what is now Sudan into its ranks and deployed them to Kenya. During both World Wars, Nubian troops fought for the British in the King’s African Rifles and many carried British colonial passports. Once their service was over, they were given settlements in Kenya, rather than being repatriated. Unable to return to Sudan, the Nubians remained on those settlements, the largest plot of land being just outside Nairobi. The Nubians named this land “Kibra” or “land of forest.”

After Kenyan independence in 1963, most Nubians—in spite of the vital role they played in the history of Kenya and East Africa—were not recognized as citizens of Kenya because of their Sudanese heritage and many became stateless. While many Nubians today have managed to regularize their status as Kenyan citizens, discrimination in access to nationality remains a major problem. Up until the most recent census in mid-2009, the Nubian community was not a formally recognized tribe of Kenya and many Nubians are still unable to fully participate in Kenyan society. The settlement once called “Kibra” is now Kibera and has grown from a community of 3,000 mostly Nubians in 1955, to one of the largest slums in Africa with a population in the hundreds of thousands—many rural migrants—who represent all the major Kenyan ethnic backgrounds. Meanwhile, the Nubians’ claim to this land has still gone unacknowledged. The denial of nationality and documentation such as national IDs and passports, as well as land rights, has been used by successive Kenyan governments to marginalize the Nubian community.

Since late 2005, I have worked on a single, long-term project documenting the impact that the denial of citizenship has on minority communities around the world. In 2008, in collaboration with UNHCR, I traveled to Kenya to create a photo essay about the Nubian community in Kibera. My conversations with Nubians in their homes often resulted in them showing me rare, heirloom photographs that most had never shared with anyone outside of their immediate family.

These archival photographs provided me with a unique historical portrait of the Nubians; a portrait of an empowered and confident community of people with a strong sense of connection to the land where they live. Most people in Kenya—as well as many people outside of the country—have no idea of this history or the various forms of exclusion that Nubians in Kenya currently face on a daily basis.

In 2010 and early 2011, a team of Nubian youth went door-to-door in Kibera asking Nubians to loan their family photographs to this project as a way for individuals to actively participate in telling others about the history of the Nubian community. Juxtaposing the older photos with my recent work makes the costs of statelessness clear by using context and contrast to show what Nubians have had and lost during their time in Kenya. The experience of Nubians in Kenya is one example of what makes statelessness one of the most radical forms of injustice today. Statelessness is a silent form of abuse and exclusion that evades both headlines and the attention of the international community. It is a condition that erases the identities and histories of entire groups of people. It deprives people of opportunities and fundamental rights that are crucial for the self-determination and empowerment of individuals, families, and communities. The perpetrators of statelessness—mostly governments—are not held accountable. This leaves stateless people, like many Nubians, disenfranchised and without access to basic rights such as education, employment, and freedom of movement. These enormous obstacles force them to the margins of society.

This project aims to both highlight the struggles of a community which—as one Nubian elder described it—is “being squeezed into extinction” and celebrate the dynamic and rich heritage of a community that continues to strive for recognition.

—Greg Constantine, November 2011