The day which addresses structural, normative, and operational challenges to birth registration, is designed to bring attention to birth registration, a one-off event that gives every child a unique identity which will give them better access to vital services like health, education, and social protection.
Hawkins stated: “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.
“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,” he said
Hawkins said that already, the National Population Council (NPC) has identified information and communication technology assets to support effective Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) systems that are integrated with other governmental systems, such as health and identity management.
“This will ensure the highest standards of data protection and confidentiality of personal data to promote birth registration among civil registration, health, and identity management systems.
“The NPC, in partnership with CRVS entities, and with support from UNICEF, co-created a Roadmap for Digital Universal Birth Registration in Nigeria. It lays out a clear vision, delineates the roles of different government agencies, builds the government’s capacity to deliver, formulates an action plan, sets a timetable and milestones, and optimizes the cost of the digital birth registration process in the country.
All of this is in advance of the implementation deadline of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“The SDG Target 16.9 calls for governments, by 2030, to provide legal identity for all, including birth registration. 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.”
Birth registration is the official recording of the occurrence and characteristics of birth by the civil registrar within the civil registry, in accordance with the legal requirements of a country.
A birth certificate is a vital record, issued by the civil registrar, that documents the birth of a child. Because it is a certified extract from the birth registration record, it proves that registration has occurred – making this document the first, and often only, proof of legal identity, particularly for children.
Source:- Vanguard
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