Marie-Pierre Poirier
About 40 million children under five years of age in the West African sub-region do not have birth certificates although the document is the most important legal deed of all time.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Marie-Pierre Poirier, the phenomenon is nothing short but the scandal of an invisible population.
She said too many children were being born and die without existence in any official government record.
“These children are invisible in the eyes of the law, and deprived from their rights to basic services such as health and education … but they are real and they are our children,” she stated.
Making a passionate appeal to ECOWAS at the high level regional ministerial meeting on the eradication of statelessness in West Africa, Ms Poirier said children whose birth are not documented are vulnerable to multiple child rights violations such as child marriage, child labour and recruitment to armed forces, as they have no proof of identity, age, or nationality.
Highlighting the need for ECOWAS to put in place measures to ensure children born in the region get their births documented, Ms Poirier said, “Ensuring that no-one born in our region is left invisible is a key target of the Sustainable Development Goal 16.9 that aims at providing legal identity for all, including birth registration by 2030.”
“It is only with functioning civil registration systems that follow international standards and recommendations, and that are nationally owned and professionally managed, that countries can achieve continuous, compulsory and universal registration of – not only – births, but also other vital events such as deaths, marriages and divorces, to ensure every life is accounted for. Such well-functioning civil registration systems are key to prevent statelessness,” she stressed.
She said UNICEF is ready to, through the African Union Programme on Accelerated Improvement of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (APAI-CRVS) that aims at permanently reforming civil registration systems across the continent, including in all ECOWAS member states, support states to make the necessary adjustments to current registration policies and practices to make them inclusive of all children born in a territory.
Volker Turk, Assistant High Commissioner for Protection UNHCR, said the problem of statelessness can only be solved when children have access to birth certificates which guarantees the right of the child to a nationality at birth.
“This will help ensure the full realisation of the value and principles that define the ECOWAS community,” he said.
From Jamila Akweley Okertchiri, Banjul, The Gambia