No Birth Certificate, No Future

D elphine is 10 years old, bright, and ready to sit her First School Leaving Certificate Examination. Sud­ denly, she realises that she will be unable to take the exam. The reason has nothing to do with her grades or with illness. It is because of a missing piece of paper: her birth certificate. In Cameroon, this happens to many children every year. A birth certificate may seem insigni­ ficant. It is simply a single sheet of A4 white security paper, printed in black, with “Republic of Cameroon” and the name of the council at the top. The document records the child’s full name, sex, date and place of birth, and the names, professions and addresses of the parents. It also includes the registration number, volume and page from the civil register. It is validated with the round official stamp of the Civil Status Officer, their handwritten si­ gnature, and at times fiscal stamps attached. This is the first legal recognition of a person. Without it, a child is effectively non-existent and invisible to the State. One can think of it as the State’s official statement: “This child was born on this day, to these parents, in this place.” With it, a child can attend school, access healthcare, and one day become a citizen with full rights. A birth certificate is not just an administrative document. It is invaluable and essential to life. Despite its importance, many children in Cameroon do not have one. Yet every child born in Came­ roon is entitled to a free birth certificate within 90 days of birth. All too often, this does not happen. In most cases, parents are simply unaware of the 90-day deadline. Once that deadline is missed, they are often forced into a costly process that requires obtaining a de­ claratory judgment before a birth certificate can be esta­ blished. This is particularly expensive when travel is in­ volved, especially for people whose livelihoods have already been affected by unrest in some regions of the country. The situation is worse in crisis-affected areas, particularly the Far North, North West and South West Regions, where some civil status centres are non- functional following destruction by armed groups. Others have closed because civil status registrars and other staff have fled the area. As a result, many children in the country are not known to the State. In short, they do not exist. The greatest challenge is not that birth certificates are unimportant. It is that millions of children in the country are growing up without one. There is no single definitive figure because civil registration is ongoing. However, ac­ cording to government and UNICEF data, the gap is si­ gnificant. It is widest among children under five. According to the 5th Cameroon Household Survey conducted by the National Institute of Statistics, 54.3 per cent of children aged 0–4 are registered. That means 45.7 per cent are not. With an estimated 3.5 million children under five in Cameroon, that is roughly 1.6 million children under five without a birth certificate. Overall estimates suggest that around four million children in Cameroon currently lack a birth certificate. UNICEF also notes that in 2023, of the 560,000 births recorded in health facilities, only 43.77 per cent were officially registered. That means more than 315,000 babies begin life each year without being entered in the civil register. O...