Conference of Lusophone countries explores ways to improve birth registration systemsThe conference contributed to establish partnerships for future exchange among all countries, in a bilateral and multilateral perspective. LUANDA, 19 September, 2005 – The Community of the eight Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) participated on a two day International Conference on Birth Registration hold in Luanda, Angola, from 15 to 16 September 2005. About 80 political leaders, Government officials and experts from Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Cap Vert, São Tomé and Príncipe, East-Timor, Brazil and Portugal shared their experiences in birth registration successes and constraints, and boosted political will to realize the right of all children to a name and a nationality. Equatorial Guinea, a Spanish speaking country was also part of this conference. “A functional birth registration system ensures that a Country keeps a credible population data base for National planning as well as for local administration that has the duty of promoting education, health and other social services for the community,” said Mario Ferrari, UNICEF Angola Representative, at the opening of the conference. “I would like to make mine the words of the South-African Archbishop Desmond Tutu: ´It is, in a very real sense, a matter of life and death. The unregistered child is a nonentity. The unregistered child does not exist´”. The Lusophone Countries conference in Luanda came on the wake of the October 2002 Anglophone and the February 2004 Francophone birth registration conferences, in Kampala and Dakar, respectively. This meeting of Lusophone Countries – that, as a whole, and notwithstanding being in different stages of their development, already have a vast experience and knowledge to share – was a platform for the Government officials, UNICEF staff and other partners to analyze and explore ways of improving the registration systems in their countries aiming at reaching the universal registration of their children. The conference also contributed to establish partnerships for future exchange among all countries, in a bilateral and multilateral perspective. The experiences shared and the resolutions adopted at the end of the conference will constitute inputs to the 2nd Eastern and Southern African Conference on Birth Registration, scheduled for end September in Mombassa, Kenya. A main conclusion was that the Lusophone countries should make the registration easily accessible to all, and introducing simplified mechanisms for the bureaucratic procedures. In order to promote the immediate registration at birth, they should introduce the free of cost factor, the collaboration among registration entities and the public and private sectors. “In an advanced stage it will be useful to computerize the registration process, using a unique basis for liaison among the registration entities,” Laura Ramirez, Civil Registration Official from Portugal suggested. At the moment of their independences, Angola and the other Portuguese ex-colonies inherited a birth registration system based on a Registration Code not adapted to the specificities of each country. Bureaucratic impositions, high costs of registration, difficulties to access and low dissemination on the importance of the registration are common barriers faced by the families in African Lusophone countries to register their children after birth, as the Convention on the Rights of the Child demands. In Angola, the above mentioned factors combined with the impact of the conflict, a low institutional capacity and the destruction of infrastructures due to the long lasting war resulted in a situation where only 29% children were registered at birth. Although, in most recent years, two free campaigns were organized, benefiting more than 4.5 million children, millions of other Angolan children keep going not registered at birth, and continue excluded from access to basic rights and services. “In this sense, the logic step subsequent to this remarkable experience, would be the adoption of a new National birth registration policy by the Angolan Government, followed by the necessary institutional reform that can contribute to a National policy for children in this country,” recommended the UNICEF Angola Representative. For further information please contact:
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