The right to a name and nationality
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© UNICEF Ecuador/2007/Larrea |
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Children from the Amazon region are inscribed for the first time thanks to the National Registation Programme. The Republic of Finland and the Ecuador-Peru Binational Plan support this initiative through UNICEF. |
The Shuar people are one of the indigenous groups from the Ecuadorian Amazon. They live in small, dispersed areas in the province of Morona Santiago. Young Shuar children and adolescents have been denied the right to a name and the Ecuadorian nationality; the majority of births are not documented, or are documented late, and when they begin school they are sometimes 12 years old or older.
"Put your name to Ecuador" is the motto of the National Registration Programme that unites several institutions in 2007 to ensure children's right to a name and nationality. The National Registry sends mobile brigades to remote communities, to serve 200.000 Ecuadorian children. Shuar children are among them.
The first brigades arrive in the Amazon region. After the effort of walking for several hours (or days) through the Amazon forest, hundreds of children receive their identification document. Thanks to it, they will have access to State services, school. When they grow up, they will be able to vote. The ID is the way to other rights.
Starting 2002 , teams from the Civil Registry were trained by UNICEF to travel to the forest and document around 5.000 Shuar children and adolescents that live very far from central, populated areas. A large number don’t have access to inscription because their parents do not have national identification numbers. In 2005 UNICEF signed an agreement with the National Civil Registry which enabled a technical team to go to these zones with a mobile national identification unit. This modality was replicated in other parts of the country in 2006, including territories inhabited by the Afro Ecuadorian population, where similar problems exist.
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© UNICEF Ecuador 2007/Larrea |
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Mobile brigades inscribe non-registered Shuar children |
