Story, Louvier Kindo Tombe
UNICEF and its partners are currently running a campaign for Cameroon’s 374 mayors to accelerate birth registration for children. The initiative is part of the campaign “My name, my identity, my right”,
The UN body invites the country’s 374 Mayors to adopt concrete solutions to ensure that all children in Cameroon are registered, a right enshrined in the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and in the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
An evaluation of the campaign was made recently in Yaoundé with the media through a “coffee talk” at the head office of UNICEF in Yaoundé on September 18, 2024.
According to UNICEF, some regions like the Fra North, North, North West and South West have embraced the campaign while others are still lagging behind like the Center region. A scribe of the organization during the “media coffee talk” encouraged the other regions to join the campaign.
An evaluation carried out by UNICEF in 2020 highlighted the central role of mayors in the birth registration system, in an environment marked by the decentralization of civil registry services and the strengthening of interoperability links between civil registry actors and other sectors, including health, education, social services and justice, which the campaign aims to amplify.
The ”My Name” campaign will run until November 2024 and conclude with a ceremony to be held on November 20th, on the 35th anniversary of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (ICRC), during which the ten municipalities with the best birth registration scores in terms of birth registration points will be rewarded.
Throughout the campaign, the progress made by the mayors will be monitored and posted on a web page dedicated to the campaign.
UNICEF’s challenge to mayors builds on pilot experiences in Cameroon and the region, which demonstrate that birth registration can be accelerated through interoperability with health and education services, decentralization and digitization.
2024 the year of birth registration in Cameroon
Today, despite the efforts made by the Cameroonian authorities, it is estimated that one in three children under the age of five living in Cameroon is deprived of a legal identity. In 2023, out of 566,680 births in health facilities, only 248,013 were registered (43.77 per cent). Furthermore, for the 2023–2024 school year, 1,569,660 children (30.4 per cent) enrolled in elementary school, have no birth certificate, according to MINEDUB’s 2022/2023 statistics.
“Thanks to the massive commitment of our ambassadors and champions,” says Nadine Perrault, UNICEF Representative, “of our government partners — the Presidency of the Republic, who has honored the Forum with its High Patronage, MINDDEVEL, BUNEC, FEICOM, of mayors, within CVU, but also of technical and financial partners — notably the World Bank, and the United Nations system, we can turn the situation around in just a few months and make Cameroon a champion country for citizenship on the continent.”
Present at the “media coffee talk” was officials from the National Civil Status Registration Agency – BUNEC who seized the occasion to lobby for Cameroon to adopt an “Identity Day”.
