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Pamela Shumba Senior Reporter—
CHILDREN’S homes in Bulawayo have called on the government to review or waiver some of the birth registration requirements for minors as they continue to struggle to acquire the documents for orphans and abandoned children in their care. The stringent requirements for one to be issued with the document have also seen children living in the rural areas failing to acquire birth certificates.
Speaking after a child care workshop organised by SOS Children’s Villages Zimbabwe yesterday, the organisation’s deputy national director Lavert Zungunde expressed concern that the rigorous system of obtaining birth certificates had made it difficult for many children to be officially registered in the country.
He said there was a need for the government and its partners to implement user friendly policies for the best interests of vulnerable children.
“Zimbabwe has the best child friendly policies and the enactment of the Births and Deaths Registration Act Chapter 5:02 was an important step in establishing the legal framework for the registration of births in Zimbabwe. However, despite the availability of this legal instrument, many children do not have birth certificates throughout the country,” said Zungunde.
“According to a research conducted in 2009, 45 percent of children under five in urban areas and 70 percent in rural areas didn’t have birth certificates. This means that all these children didn’t have a legal name, nationality or citizenship rights.”
Zungunde said the major hindrances in obtaining birth certificates included bureaucracy at the Registrar General’s offices, the rigorous systems of obtaining birth certificates as well as failure by parents to understand the importance of obtaining birth certificates for their children.
“A birth certificate is an important document that every child is entitled to. It’s significant because it’s proof of one’s nationality. It’s also important for school registration and allows the government to measure the growth of its people and calculate the number of births in the country,” said Zungunde.
He said the research recommended that the government should consider waiving some of its birth registration requirements, especially for children, who are either orphaned or abandoned.
“During the research, it was observed that virtually in all institutions visited, there were quite a number of children without birth certificates. Some don’t even know when they were born and some are excluded from sporting activities due to lack of identification, which isn’t fair to the children,” he said.
SOS Village director Delay Dube said the organisation had adopted the UN guidelines for the alternative care of the children as a key framework for its work.
“We’ve dedicated ourselves to implement the UN guidelines and advocate for their application around the world. We believe that these guidelines have the potential to promote children’s rights and improve the lives of millions of children,” said Dube.
The workshop was attended by officials from various children’s homes and government departments, who agreed that there was need to strengthen co-ordination mechanisms among ministries responsible for children’s issues.
They also called for community awareness programmes and one stop birth registration points at hospitals and clinics to reduce the number of unregistered children in the country.
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