Every child counts

The announcement in July was clear on radio; an entire week was being given to maternal, newborn and child health.

Sarah Yunana heard it. She took her one-year-old child and a neighbour’s child to the Primary Health Centre in Pegni, Kuje Area Council of Abuja.

The week offers free health care for mothers and children. Yunana, already pregnant with a second baby, hoped to get some folic acid and iron tablets for herself. She hoped her infant would get vitamin A supplement and update his immunisation.

“But very importantly, I want to do birth registration for him. He hasn’t been registered,” she said.

She plans to do the right thing – get quick and prompt birth registration for her next child once it is born.

There’s been a drive to increase birth registration, and it has been seeing success. But 17 million children under age five in Nigeria are not registered. They are classified as “invisible”.

Birth registration is as simple as a piece of paper, a certificate officially registering a child as a person, an individual, a Nigerian.

The number of children whose births are officially registered has increased over time.

In 2013, only 30 in every 100 children born were officially registered. Last year, the number rose to 43 in 100 children. It came upon registration being integrated into health services, allowing parents to get their children registered right in hospital and for registrars to visit hospitals, take record of new births and deliver birth certificates accordingly.

“We have come a long way in Nigeria and ensuring that children are registered through the health services is making a big difference – but still too many children are slipping through the cracks,” said Peter Hawkins, UNICEF Representative in Nigeria.

“These children are uncounted and unaccounted for and nonexistent in the eyes of the government or the law. Without proof of identity, children are often excluded from accessing education, health care and other vital services, and are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.”

Worldwide, 166 million children under-five, or 1 in 4, remain unregistered, according to the new report Birth Registration for Every Child by 2030: Are we on track?

In West and Central Africa, under-five registration increased in 10 years and from 41 in 100 children to 51 in 100.

This is a region where birth registration has remained stagnant for a long time—and left millions of children without their basic right to legal identity, says Marie-Pierre Poirier, UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa.

“With UNICEF’s support and under the leadership of the African Union and of national governments, countries have invested in integrating birth registration in health and immunization platforms to extend the coverage and accessibility of services and reach even the most vulnerable populations.

But majority of countries in sub-Saharan Africa lag behind the rest of the world. Countries like Chad and Guinea-Bissau have some of the lowest levels of registration: it is 12% in Chad and 24% in Guinea-Bissau.

Nigeria has its own set of barriers that prevent registration coverage: both the federal and state levels have different systems for birth registration, both running parallel to each other and often in competition with one another. It doesn’t have the adequate number of birth registrars to record every new birth, and nearly 7 million children are born every year. And a lot of Nigerians do not understand the importance of birth registration. In addition, some deeply held norms against “counting” do not encourage the registration of children.

“Every child has a right to a name, a nationality and a legal identity,” said Peter Hawkins. “We have just marked the 30th anniversary of these rights and as enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and 2020 will mark the 30th anniversary of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. We must continue to register and not stop until every Nigerian child is registered – every child counts!”

Sarah Yunana hopes to make sure her new baby, when it is born, counts.