Vital Statstics: 400,000 School Children Without Birth Certificates

The document is not so big, yet it is the very life of the child in the sense that it proves its existence. Authorities need to know how many children are born in a year in order to plan for their upkeep. Moreover, a birth certificate is the child’s first identity paper. Notwithstanding its importance, a growing number of children in Cameroon are without birth certificates.

A recent study by the national civil status body, BUNEC, says nearly 43,000 final year elementary children in the Far North Region risk missing their examinations this year because they do not have birth certificates. In all, a whooping 400,000 primary school children in the Far North Region are without birth certificates! Last year, 18,000 pupils in the Far North Region missed their certificate examinations for lack of birth certificates, BUNEC says.

It is against this background that the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF and the European Union, EU on February 21, 2019 in Yaounde organised a seminar on reporting birth registration. Attended by 25 members of the Network for the Promotion of the Rights of Children and other Vulnerable People, REJODEC, the one-day training w...