Contraintes socioculturelles de la-non déclaration des naissances chez les communautés peulhs dans le Département de Korhogo (Côte d’Ivoire)

Despite the ratification of international laws on the rights of peoples as well as those that regulate the functioning of civil status in Côte d'Ivoire, the issue of birth registration is an acute one in certain communities, particularly among the Peulhs living in the Department of Korhogo. The aim of this purely qualitative study is to understand the social logic behind the non-declaration of births among the Peulh. Based on interviews with 44 respondents obtained on the basis of saturation, the study notes that this phenomenon can be explained by the perceptions of the Fulani of civil status and the emergence of the Koranic school, which creates an environment hostile to modernism. Moreover, the lifestyle characterised by transhumance constitutes another explanatory logic, especially since the Fulani believe that the transhumant does not need administrative documents because nature does not belong to anyone.

An Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices of Birth and Death Registration in Kilifi County in the Coastal Region in Kenya

Background. Countries need vital statistics for social and economic planning. World Health Organization (WHO) recommends at least 80% coverage to use registration data on births and deaths for social and economic planning. However, registration remains low in developing countries. National coverage for Kenya in 2014 was 62.2% for births and 45.7% for deaths, with wide regional differentials. Kilifi County in the coastal region in Kenya reported rates below the national coverage at 56% for births and 41% for deaths in 2013. Objective. To determine level of knowledge and practice and reasons for low coverage of birth and death in Kilifi County. Method. This is a descriptive cross-sectional study that employed multistage cluster random sampling procedure to select a sample of 420 households from which household heads and women with children below five years old were surveyed. Results. Out of the 420 households sampled, about all respondents (99%) were aware of birth registration while death was 77%. Their main sources of information were assistant chiefs at 77% for both birth and death registration and family and friends at 67% for deaths and 52% for births. Coverage for birth registration was 85% and death 63%. More deaths occurred at home (55%) than in hospital (44%) while 55% of deliveries occurred in hospital and 44% at home. Main reasons for not registering death were ignorance (77%) and transport and opportunity cost (21%) while for birth registration were ignorance (42%), travel and opportunity cost (41%), lack of identification documents (9%), and home deliveries (7%). Conclusion. Registration of birth and death has improved in Kilifi County. The drivers are legal and requirements to access social rights. Reasons for not registering are ignorance and opportunity costs. Community should be sensitized on the importance of registration, address home deliveries and deaths, and increase efficiency in registration. Further research is recommended to determine the severity of teenage pregnancy and orphanhood in the county.

Dossier: The Stateless Rohingya—Practical Consequences of Expulsion

The international community has been called upon to ramp up efforts to end statelessness and provided with a guiding framework of 10 Actions. This dossier presents the practical consequences of expulsion, both direct and indirect outcomes of collective violence, directed towards the Rohingyas. Touching upon the nexus between children's rights, human trafficking, and practical challenges associated on-the-ground, the dossier also discusses the imperative need for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states—collectively as a region—to take steps in fulfilling Action 7 of the Global Action Plan through the birth registration of Rohingya children as part of their existing efforts in order to enhance the protection of refugee children.

The South African Constitutional Court Decides Against Statelessness and In Favour of Children: Chisuse v Director-General, Department of Home Affairs [2020] ZACC 20

The 2020 Chisuse case of the Constitutional Court of South Africa comes at a crucial moment in South Africa’s post-apartheid trajectory where the circle of citizenship is ‘shrinking’ The Constitutional Court decided in favour of four of the five foreign-born applicants, all children with one citizen parent, who had sought an order to be registered as citizens by the relevant government department, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). The applicants argued that the DHA’s interpretation of the amended citizenship law violated their constitutional rights. Not deciding the matter on a constitutional basis, the Constitutional Court creatively and authoritatively interpreted the statutory regime in favour of the applicants. An example of the Court’s important national role in upholding a human rights-based vision of South African citizenship against persistent and potentially growing bureaucratic opposition, Chisuse also displays an interpretive approach both mindful of the risks of child statelessness and supportive of the place of civil birth registration in the global provision of legal identity for all.

Deficiency in civil registration and vital statistics reporting in remote areas: the case of Sabah, Malaysia

Malaysia has a well-established civil registration system dating back to the 1960s. Birth registration is virtually complete at the national level. However, the quality of civil registration in some remote areas is doubtful, as evidenced by the abnormally low birth and death rates in several districts. This study focuses on identifying districts in Sabah, where the reporting of births seems problematic. Sabah is the least developed state in Malaysia, and it is sparsely populated, despite being the second most populous state in the country. Sabah’s civil registration lags behind the other states, to the extent that birth and death statistics were not reported for the state in the vital statistics report for the period 2000 to 2009. A 2016 study found that death registration is almost 100%, except for Sabah (88%). The plausible reasons behind the ultra-low birth rate reported in several remote districts in Sabah include misreporting of the place of occurrence as the usual residence, delayed reporting, non-coverage, ignorance of the law, inaccessibility, presence of a large number of migrants, miscommunication, and errors in data entry. The under-reporting of births may have serious consequences, such as misallocation of resources and deprivation of services to those affected. In line with the transformative promise of “leaving no one behind,” the Sustainable Development Goals urge all countries to strive to improve data quality for planning; this includes complete birth registration for creating effective development programs to reach target groups more effectively.

Too precarious to walk: an integrated “three delays” framework for modeling barriers to maternal health care and birth registration among stateless persons and irregular migrants in Malaysia

This study extends Thaddeus and Maine’s (1994) “three delays” framework to model the interrelated barriers to maternal health care and birth registration. We focus on stateless persons and irregular migrants, populations that are especially at risk of being “left behind” in United Nations member states’ efforts to “provide legal identity to all” as part of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted in Sabah, Malaysia, we model delays in accessing maternal health care and birth registration as an integrated, cyclical process. We identify the political and legal barriers that stateless or migrant families confront while deciding to make institutional contact (Phase I), identifying and reaching health or registering institutions (Phase II), and receiving adequate and appropriate treatment (Phase III). We find that exclusion from one system raises the risk of exclusion from the other, resulting in a range of negative consequences, including increased health risks, governments’ impaired ability to monitor population health, and the perpetuation of intergenerational cycles of legal exclusion.

Determinants of birth registration in India: Evidence from NFHS 2015–16

Objectives Official data on birth is important to monitor the specific targets of SDGs. About 2.7 million children under age five years do not have official birth registration document in India. Unavailability of birth registration document may deprive the children from access to government-aided essential services such as fixed years of formal education, healthcare, and legal protection. This study examines the effect of socioeconomic, demographic and health care factors on birth registration in India. We also examined the spatial pattern of completeness of birth registration that could be useful for district level intervention. Methods We used data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), 2015–16. We carried out the descriptive statistics and bivariate analysis. Besides, we used multilevel binary logistic regression to identify significant covariates of birth registration at the individual, district, and state levels. We used GIS software to do spatial mapping of completeness of birth registration at district level. Results The birth registration level was lower than national average (80.21%) in the 254 districts. In Uttar Pradesh, 12 out of 71 districts recorded lower than 50% birth registration. Also, some districts from Arunachal Pradesh, J&K, and Rajasthan recorded lower than 50% birth registration. We also found a lower proportion of children are registered among children of birth order three and above (62.83%) and rural resident (76.62%). Children of mothers with no formal education, no media exposure, poorest wealth quintile, OBC and muslims religion have lower level of birth registration. Multilevel regression result showed 25 percent variation in birth registration lie between states while the remaining 75 percent variation lie within states. Moreover, children among illiterate mother (AOR = 0.57, CI [0.54, 0.61], p<0.001), Muslims households (AOR = 0.90, CI [0.87, 0.94], p<0.001), and poorest wealth quintile (AOR = 0.38, CI [0.36, 0.41], p<0.001) showed lower odds for child’s birth registration. Conclusion We strongly suggest linking the birth registration facilities with health institutions.