More than 60% of children under one year are not yet registered in Mozambique. In addition, only 28% of children under five have an official birth certificate. To try to change this reality, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is supporting the opening of positions offering identification services in five health centers in the northern province of Niassa.
Unicef will use $ 1.7 million in funds, which were donated by Norway for the action.
Funds are expected to contribute to training about 250 leaders in the province. More than 200,000 people aged zero to 60 are expected to have access to birth registration and civil identification services.
“For us, it is essential to provide technical assistance where there are most vulnerable children,” says UNICEF Representative in Mozambique, Marcoluigi Corsi. According to him, the lack of official identification documents can lead to a child getting married, starting work or being recruited by the military before the legal age.
“It is one of the goals of our government to enable every Mozambican citizen to have a civil identity document. With this project we will take our services further, we will have access to the populations that are most in need. So this project also comes to some extent to answer what were the consequences of the passing of the cyclones themselves, ”explains Deputy Interior Minister Helena Mateus Kida, who praised the support of the Norwegian Embassy in the country and stressed that the initiative achieves the goals. from the authorities.
Mozambique has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child which also recognizes the right of a child to be registered immediately after birth, to have a name and a nationality. Statistics indicate that 45.5% of children under 17 have no birth registration in Mozambique.