13/6/2003
Plan and UNICEF work to Improve African Children’s Prospects

On 16 June 2003, Plan, along with its partner charity UNICEF will be marking the Day of the African Child by organising a range of promotional activities across the continent. The activities, which include conferences, exhibitions, festivals, music events and theatre shows, aim to help raise Africa awareness of the importance of birth certificates for all.

Seven out of ten newborns in Sub Saharan Africa have no official identity, giving the region the highest rate of unregistered children in the world. The problem is greatest in rural areas. For example, it is estimated that only one in every thirty children has a birth certificate in rural Tanzania. (At the other end of the spectrum, nineteen out of every twenty children in the towns and cities of Cameroon are registered.)

John Greensmith, International Executive Director of Plan International says:
" Without a birth certificate a child is a "non-person", unable to prove their age, nationality or who their parents are. They can then be denied their rights and privileges as citizens, such as education and healthcare. "

Without widespread birth registration, governments cannot plan effectively. Reliable statistics about how many children are born in each town or village are needed in order for health and education ministries to provide the right facilities to meet local needs.
Plan is calling for African governments, NGO's, local leaders and all those with influence in the community to encourage parents to register their children and help make it as easy as possible for them to obtain birth certificates.

Plan says that unregistered children have little protection against the worst kinds of abuse and exploitation. Serious crimes, like recruiting child soldiers to fight in Uganda or Sierra Leone, or forcing girls and boys into prostitution, employing underage children to work on cocoa plantations in Western Africa or denying AIDS orphans the right to inherit their parents' land, all benefit from the anonymity and lack of legal identity of the young victims. In times of war or disaster unregistered people are even more exposed because they lack the identity papers that would enable them to qualify for food aid or refugee status.

There are numerous reasons why parents fail to register their children. Some live a long distance from the nearest registry office and some cannot afford the registration fee. Many live in poor housing conditions and do not have anywhere safe to keep important documents, and some prefer to delay registration until they feel confident that all their children have reached an age when their chances of surviving to adulthood are good.

Government resources are another problem. Often civil registry offices are few and far between, or lack basic facilities such as typewriters, filing cabinets or trained staff. Plan hopes that in the future governments will be able to do more to make birth registration more accessible and encourage parents everywhere to make it a higher priority.
The right to be registered at birth is laid down in Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It states: "The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name [and] the right to acquire a nationality..." All countries that have ratified the Convention are obligated to comply with this article. These states should also make clear to their citizens why it is important.

As John Greensmith sums up:
" A birth certificate is a ticket to citizenship. Every child should have one."

Plan and UNICEF have been working closely with governments and other local and international organisations for the past five years to improve birth registration rates. In Asia, a joint Plan and UNICEF project addressed the lack of birth registration throughout the whole of the region. The two charities helped register 3.2 million children in India's state of Orissa and more than 4 million children in Bangladesh. Now Plan and UNICEF are committed to working together with governments, local groups and international organisations on birth registration in Africa, to give African children their right to an identity.

In a separate development this week, the head of the United Nations Children’s Fund called on African leaders to embrace child-centred standards as the primary indicator of progress across their continent.

“We all agree that in order to sustain human progress, a government must invest in its children,” Executive Director Carol Bellamy told leaders attending the Africa Economic Summit in Durban, South Africa. “Doing so is both a moral and an economic imperative. Thus, the well-being of your children should become the most important standard for measuring your individual achievement as leaders.”

Arguing that no single measure of development predicts the future as reliably as the well-being of a nation’s youngest citizens, Ms. Bellamy urged African nations to focus their limited resources on investments in health, education, equality and protection for children. She told them not to be shy about comparing their progress against other nations of similar economic strength.

Africa accounts for only 12 per cent of the world’s population yet is the home of 43 per cent of the world’s child deaths, 50 per cent of maternal deaths, 70 per cent of people living with HIV/AIDS, and a staggering 90 percent of the children orphaned by AIDS.

“No continent with such unfavourable indicators of child well-being can achieve real development or stability,” Ms. Bellamy stressed. “Only by improving the immediate prospects of children can we break out of poverty toward true progress for Africa.”

Ms. Bellamy’s proposal was presented to Summit attendees in the form of a 50-page white paper entitled, “The Young Face of NEPAD” – a reference to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Founded last year by African leaders, the partnership seeks to assert local accountability for the continent’s destiny.

Members of the NEPAD partnership include the African Union and the Africa Economic Summit, which is part of the World Economic Forum.