Birth registration campaign gives children rights

The importance of registering a child's birth will form the central theme of Monday's Day of the African Child commemorations throughout Southern Africa. The campaign, which is being led by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and regional governments, hopes to give almost 17 million unregistered sub-Saharan children access to the rights they would automatically qualify for, just by being registered. This includes basic rights like health care and education, which unregistered children are deprived of, and extends to protection from exploitation through early military conscription and child marriages. "Without a birth certificate, children have no official identity, no recognised name and no nationality. In later life, the unregistered child may be unable to apply for a passport or formal job, open a bank account, get a marriage license, stand for elective office or vote," a UNICEF statement said. In Mozambique the day will be marked by the scrapping of the compulsory US $2 late registration fee imposed by authorities if babies are registered 30 days after they are born. This is in line with UNICEF's recommendation that birth registration be universal and free, with governments making resources available to register every child. Many parents in Mozambique said they battled to register their children due to long traveling distances to the relevant authority, or a simple lack of pens, birth certificates and registry books when they got there. In Zambia, President Levy Mwanawasa will be launching a national drive to provide at least one million children with a birth certificate in the next year. UNICEF will provide 100,000 blank birth certificates and information booklets on why registration is important, while the Zambian government will decentralise registration to provincial level to make it easier. In addition, almost 80 child rights clubs will mobilise their schools and communities on birth registration. Other countries participating in the campaign include Namibia, Swaziland and Angola. The national free birth registration campaign in Angola has so far enabled over 1.8 million children to have their births registered. For more details: www.unicef.org