Dighambong Anthony Mvo, Mayor of Wum Council, who doubles as the First Vice President of the United Councils and Cities of Cameroon (UCCC) is on course to reinforce strategies for the establishment of birth certificates for children. Mayor Dighambong attended the first National Forum on Birth Registration organized to initiate changes that facilitate the production of birth certificates.
Having attended the forum, the Mayor told Cameroon Infotrend that he shall be implementing reforms in the approach of establishing a birth certificates.
Children in Wum Municipality make up the seven million Cameroonian children who are in none possession of birth certificates. The reasons for children without 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.
Another problematic issue in establishing this document arises with children born from incest and others born from rape where parents often have a feeling of embarrassment to approach civil status officials and declare details for entry into the documents.
Speaking to Cameroon Infotrend, Mayor Dighambong, said he would work with multiple stakeholders to ensure birth registration. “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 a birth certificate”
Concerning the case of children with unknown fathers, the Mayor hinted that dialogue shall be used
” The law provides that the mother gives us the information and after we have had that information, we might not even put the name of the father, so we are going to dialogue with their mothers who can give us the information while we establish the birth certificate while pending time when the father’s name is available, it can be completed”
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.
Officials uphold that the establishment of birth certificates for all children is imperative.