Airlines could be required to provide, in advance, passenger information and name record data to Rwanda’s Directorate General of Immigration and Emigration, before taking off or starting journeys, as the country seeks to bolster measures against terrorism offences and serious crimes, according to a new bill.

The relevance of the draft law on advance passenger information and passenger name record data was approved by the Plenary Sitting of the Lower Chamber of Parliament, on July 31. It will be scrutinised by a responsible committee of the Lower House, prior to being voted into law by its Plenary Sitting.

According to the bill, “transport carriers” includes air, road, railway and water transport carriers with a valid operating licence or equivalent document for carriage of passengers.

The government bill was tabled before the Lower Chamber of Parliament by the Minister in the Office of the President, Judith Uwizeye, on July 31.

The bill, Uwizeye said, aims to regulate the collection, transmission, assessment, and sharing of Advance Passenger Information and Passenger Name Record data for passenger preclearance and prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of terrorist offences and serious crimes.

“Through this law — once enacted — all passenger transport carriers, either those using road, water, or airways, are obliged to transmit passenger information and name record data by electronic means so that the information gets processed and the results be forwarded to responsible organs, with an aim to prevent terrorism offences and other serious crimes,” Uwizeye said.

Data provided for in the bill includes Advance Passenger Information (API) and Passenger Name Record (PNR) data.

API means information regarding a passenger, crew or other occupant transported by the transport carrier, the draft law indicated.

According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), API refers to a passenger’s identity and includes full name, date of birth, gender, citizenship and travel document data. API is typically obtained from travel documents and available from the machine-readable area of your passport.

The bill defines Passenger Name Record (PNR) as a record of each passenger’s travel, which contains the information necessary to enable reservations to be processed and controlled by the booking and participating transport carriers for each journey booked by or on behalf of any person, contained in reservation systems, departure control systems used to check passengers, or equivalent systems providing the same functionalities.

Uwizeye said that it is provided in an Order that will help implement the law (once enacted) that as soon as passenger check-in is done, a transport carrier must send the required (initial) information, and send final information soon after boarding.

Rationale

Uwizeye said that after the country implemented a visa waiver policy for nationals from African countries, Member States of the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF), and Member States of the Commonwealth, as well as issuing visas on arrival in 2018, the agency responsible for immigration and migration introduced Advance Passenger Information data through Advance Passenger Information/ Passenger Name Record system “in order to avoid a situation where we can let in people wanted for terrorism offences, and other serious crimes.”

Though this system exists and is used since 2020, she said, there is no law that requires transport carriers to provide passenger data to a responsible authority before the passengers enter the country – pointing out that currently, information was obtained through mutual arrangements with carriers such as airlines.

Since the system was set up, it was indicated that there are suspicious or wanted passengers appearing in the system, an explanatory note of the draft law pointed out.

International standards

Regarding international cooperation, she pointed out that the bill shall be a way of complying with the international standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the United Nations Security Council and other international bodies like the European Union, all of which request that countries should put in place a mechanism for managing passenger information and name record before they enter countries in question.

Still, since the law relating to the protection of personal data and privacy provides protections in general, it was deemed necessary to initiate this draft law on the subject so that Rwanda meets international requirements in the implementation of Advance Passenger Information and Passenger Name Record data, according to the explanatory note of the bill.

Confidentiality

The Directorate General of Immigration and Emigration and any responsible State organ, ensure the confidentiality of processing data and data security in accordance with relevant legislation on data protection.

Concerning faults and their sanctions, the bill proposes that an Order of the Minister in charge of immigration and emigration determines faults and their sanctions with regard to non-compliance with provisions of this law (once enacted), modalities of administering the sanctions, and appeal.