Leaving no child behind: Birth registration campaign in Kvemo Karli, Georgia
By Maya Kurtsikidze KIZILAJLO VILLAGE, Georgia, 30 July 2008 - Three-year-old Sadat doesn’t have a birth registration, so do 22 per cent of all children living Kvemo Kartli, a regional largely dominated by ethnic group Azeris in Georgia. “I did not think this was so important,” says Sadat’s father Sarkhan Alakhverdiev, 42, about his daughter birth record. A former musician, he now assembles furniture to support his family. They live in a large village of 8,500 outside the capital city Tbilisi. Most of the villagers are Azeris, who speak none or very little Russian or Georgian. Like many children in Kvemo Kartli, little Sadat was delivered at home. Frequent home deliveries are among the leading causes why so many children in the region are left without a birth registration. According to a UNICEF-commissioned survey, Kvemo Kartli has a significantly lower birth registration rate than the national coverage, which stands at 92 per cent. Without proof of their existence, many of these children are denied of their rights to go to school, or receive free healthcare and social services to protect them from violence and abuse. To change this unacceptable reality, the Civil Registry Agency of Georgia, UNHCR and UNICEF have recently joined forces, launching a new project on birth registration. The initiative has started in July and will go on for the next 10 months. The partners will work together to ensure that by the end of this project, all children will have their birth registration in Kvemo Kartli. Six years old Sianan was also born at home. Her mother Olga has Russian citizenship but lost her passport while moving from Russian to Georgia a few years ago. She tried to obtain a Georgian passport, but the family’s economic hardship and the local authority’s bureaucracy had made that attempt an impossible task. Without identification documents, a parent cannot register his or her child’s birth – another important impediment for the lack of registration of children in Kvemo Kartli. The new project, however, helps parents like Olga get their crucial identification papers. “So far I have only been seeing the local doctor in our village,” says Olga. “After obtaining my identification papers, I will be able to go to better medical facilities in the state to seek medical treatment for my kids.”
That is also the wish of 82 years old Sekvardin for his grandsons, nine and eight years old Sekhvardin and Royal Aliyevs. The boys live with their grandparents because their father is in jail and their mother left home three years ago. Neither of the two children has ever been vaccinated. Despite the family’s financial difficulties, the children are not entitled to receive any social services from the Government, again, because they don’t have the papers to show that they are lawful citizens of the country. “I don’t know what is needed to register the birth of my grandchildren,” says the grandfather. “I don’t know where to begin to collect the necessary documents. It may cost money, which is something I don’t have.” “I took the kids to school a few times,” says the children’s grandmother Piruza Aliyeva. “But the school principal refused to accept the boys without birth papers. What we can do? We came back home again.” Neither of the boys can read nor write. They understand neither Georgian nor Russian. With the aid of an interpreter, we managed to learn that little Sekhvardin wants to become a policeman, while Royal enjoys football. We told them that they will soon get their birth registration, something that will help restore their rights to an education and bring them a little closer to realizing their dreams. Because of the language barrier, the Azeri communities are largely isolated from the outside world, another contributing factor to Kvemo Kartli’s low birth registration rate. The Governement is now working to promote the official language Georgian among its population, particularly among ethnic groups like Azeri.
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