A name and nationality open the door to all other rights
Santo Domingo.- A teenager went to the Civil Registry office at the Nuestra Señora de la Altagracia Maternity Hospital to register her one-year old sister. Her request surprised the employees in this office and several questions came up: about the motives for her decision and how she could solve this situation. “Her mother died and hadn’t registered the baby. She wants to take responsibility, but she is still a minor, she turns 18 in December”, said Aridia José López and Gladis Raquel Soto, who work at the office, when discussing the cases they deal with on an everyday basis from people who arrive with the intention of allowing more children to enjoy their right to a name and a nationality. Aridia and Gladis said that the people who come to their office on the first floor of the Maternity Hospital include grandparents, sisters of mothers who have given birth in this or another medical centre, asking for their children to be registered, but only mothers and fathers have the right to declare their children. The teenager’s case, which they are following up, is the first of its kind to arrive at their desk. “She needs to apply for her cédula (ID card) and wait till she turns 18. She has to obtain a record of her sister’s birth from the hospital and take her mother’s death certificate to the second circumscription to apply for the name to be registered”, they said, describing the procedure the teenager has to follow. They explained that she lives with two siblings under the age of 18 in Santo Domingo. She studies and an aunt helps her with her expenses. They said that when the young woman made her request, she told them that her one-year old sister’s dad disappeared after her mother died, and she can’t wait for more time to go by without registering her sister’s name in the civil registry. 25% of people who register births are teenagers, although more fathers than mothers come here to declare their children. Some come from other medical centres, even from private clinics, but they are not accepted. Here we only register babies who were born in this Maternity Hospital”, added Aridia, while Gladis asks a mother and father to sign the register book. 200 registrations a week “Sometimes we don’t take a break because of the large number of people that comes in, and we’d rather not eat than let them leave without documents”, says Gladis Raquel Soto. Aridia and Gladis estimate that at the end of the year they will have filled 40 books with 200 declarations each. The average number of daily entries is 42. “The times when most people come in are at the moment we open the office, at 8:00 in the morning, and between 11:00 and 1:00 in the afternoon. Sometimes we go on until 3:00 in the afternoon without eating, so that those people don’t leave without declaring their children”, they say. This office still hasn’t got the foreigners’ registration books, so the children of foreign parents born in this Maternity Hospital have to be registered at another office.
The 2007 Demographic Health Survey (ENDESA) found that 22% of children under the age of five in the Dominican Republic did not have a birth certificate. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has started a process at regional level that guarantees respect for the right to a name and a nationality. María Eugenia del Pozo
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