Johannesburg, 16 August, 2020 / 8:12 pm (ACI Africa).
On the occasion of the third African Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Day commemorated Monday, August 10, members of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) have raised concerns over the failure by authorities in their respective countries and the continent at large to prioritize birth registration, a documentation gap that denies children access to basic rights.
“One crucial civil registration activity that needs highlighting is birth registration. In South Africa, birth registration is taken for granted as it has not only been common practice of our system for a long time but is a legal obligation as well,” SACBC members have said in their Sunday, August 9 statement shared with ACI Africa.
They indicate that birth registration in other countries in Africa “is not a common practice and there is a critical gap in establishing the legal existence of a child because many have not been registered at birth.”
The members of the three-nation conference make reference to the 2019 UNICEF Birth Registration Report, which indicates that “there are 166 million children under the age of 5 or 1 in 4 children of the same age group whose births have not been recorded” with 87 percent of them being in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
“The report paints an even grimmer picture of 237 million children under the same age group of five having no birth certificates,” they say in their August 9 statement signed by SACBC Liaison Bishop for Migrants and Refugees, Archbishop Buti Tlhagale.