Victor Uzoho
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), has disclosed that about 56 per cent of births in Nigeria are unregistered, while the country accounts for about 11 per cent of the unregistered children in the West African region.
According to the organisation, Africa has the lowest birth registration rate in the world, noting that only 44 per cent of children are registered at birth, while millions of deaths go uncounted every year.
In a statement on Tuesday to commemorate the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Day, the UNICEF Nigeria Country Representative, Peter Hawkins, said the country was still addressing the structural, normative and operational challenges to birth registration.
According to him, birth registration is a one-off event that gives every child a unique identity, which would give them better access to vital services like health, education, and social protection.
“Every child counts and we must ensure that we count every child so that they can best benefit from important services like health and education,” said Hawkins.
“We need to work together to ensure effective coordination to make this happen. Functional systems that allow for the sharing of data across information management databases that are integrated with other vital services are necessary to push the birth registration rate in Nigeria up, and make sure every child is counted
“Every child has a right to a name, a nationality and a legal identity. Working together, we can and must bring Nigeria to meeting its SDG obligation to provide legal identity for all, including through birth registration,” Hawkins said
Meanwhile, the National Population Commission (NPC), has identified information and communication technology (ICT) assets as vital in supporting effective CRVS systems that are integrated with other governmental systems, such as health and identity management.
The Commission said this would ensure the highest standards of data protection, and confidentiality of personal data to promote birth registration among civil registration, health, and identity management systems.
Every child has a right to a name, a nationality and a legal identity. Working together, we can and must bring Nigeria to meeting its SDG obligation to provide legal identity for all, including through birth registration.
Also, in partnership with CRVS entities, and support from UNICEF, the NPC co-created a roadmap for Digital Universal Birth Registration (DUBR) in Nigeria, which laid out a clear vision, and the roles of different government agencies in building capacity to formulate and deliver an action plan.
The DUBR would set timetables and milestones, and optimize the cost of the digital birth registration process in the country, to meet the implementation deadline of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
SDG Target 16.9 calls on governments to provide legal identity for all, including birth registration by 2030. The indicator for the target is the “proportion of children under 5 years of age whose births have been registered with a civil authority, by age.”
