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Babies in Iran registered for key services, thanks to mobile unit

© UNICEF Iran

Maryam Dehghani brings her 20-day-old baby to be registered at the mobile unit visiting her village.

HORMOZGAN, Iran, 17 May 2006 – Hormozgan Province in the south of Iran is one of the most deprived in the country. In the rural areas, people work either as subsistence farmers or as manual labourers. Many villages lie far from the nearest town, set deep into the mountains, with little access to social services, including birth registration.

“I rarely go to the nearest town because there are very few cars that go there,” says Maryam Dehghani, a 29-year-old mother of two, as she breastfeeds her newborn child. “It’s so far away and we don’t have the money to pay for a taxi.”

So, 20 days after the birth of baby Anahita, birth registration officials have come to her instead. Over the last few months, Iran has been sending in mobile teams, supported by UNICEF, to help parents like Maryam register the births of their children.

“Birth registration is important because it is a fundamental factor in the realization of other rights like access to immunization, access to health care and access to education,” says UNICEF Assistant Project Officer Negar Bayat. “It is also important when governments want to protect their children from underage marriages and underage recruitment and military service.”

Ensuring child rights

Local health workers and village councils act as reporters in their communities and tell registration officials about recent births. Since October of last year, the mobile teams have registered more than 3,000 births – a huge improvement from the past.

“The mobile birth-registration project has been very useful,” says the head of birth registration in Hormozgan Province, Mahmoud Alipour. “Now most of the births in this province are registered within the 15-day deadline. In the past they would wait much longer.”

In some cases, births go unregistered because couples have religiously but not officially registered their marriage. In this situation, Iranian law states that birth registration cannot go ahead unless both parents are present when registering the child. The mobile teams act as advisers and try to sort out legal problems that prevent registration.

Even in the most remote villages, many Iranians are beginning to recognize the value of birth registration. With the arrival of the mobile teams, they are now able to secure the most fundamental right for their children.