Mayors drawn from the 374 local government Councils in Cameroon have signed a charter on Universal Birth Registration which is aimed at getting every child to be entitled to a birth certificate. The charter was the component of a National Forum on Universal Birth Registration, held by the Mayors from the 26th to the 27th of April 2024, at the Yaounde Conference Center, organized by the Ministry of Decentralization and Local Development (MINDDEVEL), chaired by the Minister, Georges Elanga Obam.
The terms of the charter is based on four main thrusts including: Decentralization and Local planning, enhancing collaboration between actors in the Civil status registry, financing the civil status registration system and the digitalisation of birth registration. By the terms of these four thrusts, the Mayors are to promote the fundamental right of universal birth registration for every child born in a council area by putting in place all the necessary measures to draw up and issue a birth certificate to every child, mobilize all municipal councillors for universal birth registration, organize mobile units to collect birth declarations and issue birth certificates in communities, particularly in rural and remote areas, involve traditional and religious leaders, women’s associations, development committees, neighbourhood and village committees, as well as other players likely to contribute to universal birth registration, implement the national strategy for collecting and reporting quality statistical and demographic data to improve local planning, set up mechanisms to monitor and evaluate the functioning of council civil registry services to combat fraud and corruption, which undermine the principle of free birth certificates issued on time, take all appropriate measures, including setting up mobile registration units to reduce costs for families and ensure that civil status registry services are accessible to all.The charter goes ahead to advocate for the strengthening of the partnership between civil status registration and health by setting up civil status registration posts in health facilities and including the registration of civil status data into health services to ensure that children are registered at birth, link birth registration to vaccination programmes, involve traditional rulers, community workers and other organizations linked to child welfare. On the aspect of finance, the charter wants all costs to be eliminated in the issuance of birth certificates plus the provision of a financial plan for council workers on birth certificates. Further more is the digitalisation of birth registration in the charter which advocates for the adoption of digital technologies for civil status registration as a solution for modernizing the civil status registration service which would also secure civil status registration data. The charter was signed following discussions on the challenges related to the Universal Birth Registration system in Cameroon. Some of these challenges revealed that one in every three children lacks a birth certificate amounting to seven million children without birth certificates in Cameroon. Studies also revealed that 38 percent of children under the age of 5 are not recorded in the civil status registry and more than 1,600,000 children attended school without a birth certificate according to the 2021/2022 Statistical Yearbook. Some of the problems cited for the non possession of birth certificates include limited access to registration centers, financial constraints, complex registration procedures, difficulty to afford birth registration fee, transport costs to get to the birth registration centers and irresponsible parenting amongst others.
According to officials in the domain of civil registration, the existence of children without birth certificates means they do not legally exist, in fact they were never born. This means that the policies taken in the country which are often based on data from the civil registry, automatically excludes children not registered.
Speaking on the issue of policies viz a viz birth registration, Minister Georges Elanga Obam said “if you do not have a birth certificate, legally you do not exist and you cannot benefit from the services that the state is rendering to the population. It is also an economical problem. You cannot be taken into account when we are making development programs. It is a demographic problem also. It is very expensive to make a general census but when you have a good civil status system, you may not even have to make a general census. So it is important for us to continue talking to our population” Experts consider birth registration as a fundamental human right and an essential means of protecting the right of a child to a name from birth. The birth certificate is further used to acquire a nationality which is interwoven with the political rights of person. The birth certificate is a tool to access social services like health, education, and justice services, and the absence of a birth certificate exposes the child to the risk of statelessness, and to certain forms of abuse and exploitation. Having signed the charter for Universal Birth Declaration, Mayors have the task to champion birth registration by implementing all within their means to ensure that all children own birth certificates. Talking at the forum, Mayors accentuated the significance. The Mayor of Andek Council said”We have been working in collaboration with all stakeholders to make sure that our children all have birth certificates despite the challenges that are there like the issuance of court declaration.Without a birth certificate you don’t exist and you are not a Cameroonian. You need a birth certificate to be able to obtain a national Identity card and it is only after owning a National Identity Card that you can get registered on the voter’s register. So the birth certificate is very important to be part of the political process of the country”
The Mayor of Kumba City Council, Gregory Mewano, shared the strategies being taken “We already are taking some measures to make sure that the civil status officers do not remain in the office but that the go to the buyam sellams in the market, then we have meetings with the bike riders”
The Mayor of Wum Council, Dighambong Anthony, is ready to implement reforms “It is a pathetic that about 7 million Cameroonians do not have birth certificates. It is pathetic, and going back home, there are a lot of reforms I’m going to make as far as the civil status registration centers are concerned. I’m going to work directly with the chiefs of centers especially the district hospital in Wum. I’m going to work with the health centers like Saint Martin’s to make sure that something is being done when a child is born.I am going to take this challenge to my councillors to make sure we vote a certain amount of money every year for the processing of birth certificates so that we don’t have any child born without birth certificates”
To the Mayor of Babessi Council, it is a factor for nationality”We are going home with the slogan, one child, one birth certificate, one identity. The objective is to identify all the children within our Municipality within the shortest possible time to give them an opportunity to have the nationality because the birth certificate is the guarantee of your nationality because these children should have their nationality before they begin to grow up and that’s the main objective and that’s what we have achieved in this forum”
Mayors from the 374 Councils in Cameroon returned from the forum with the zeal to champion legal birth registration.
By Mildred Ndum Wung