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Birth registration needs scaling up

 

A report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says nearly 1.2 million children under five years of age in Ghana are not registered in any official document.

The report dubbed, “Every Child’s Birth Right: Inequities and trends in birth registration” was released to coincide with UNICEF’s 67th anniversary.

The report collected statistical analysis spanning 161 countries and presents the latest available country data and estimates on birth registration.

“Birth registration is a process that gives every child a right, it is the right that gives the child an identity and nationality”, according to UNICEF Ghana Representative, Susan Namondo Ngongi. “But, the pattern of birth registration coverage in Ghana shows disparities across diverse issues. Children not registered at birth or without identification documents have challenges accessing education, healthcare and social security later in life. The chances of improving their lives are slim,” she stated.

Ghana’s trend, according to the report, was similar to the average global situation as the situation across West and Central Africa was not any better. 

The report states that two out of three children on average were not registered at birth and a wide range exists in birth registration rates across the region- only four per cent in some countries and 90 per cent in others.

Many reasons, the report said, such as difficult access to registration centres, socio-cultural and economic reasons accounted for the children whose births were not recorded.  

Bottleneck analysis

A 2013 UNICEF supported bottleneck analysis in Ghana which shed more light on the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey showed that unregistered children mostly lived in rural and urban areas and are present in different socio-economic and socio-cultural settings.

It also showed that in some hard-to-reach areas, registration rates were not even reaching 20 per cent of children less than five years old.

The analysis which was done to better understand the disparities and articulate strategies for overcoming the barriers to reaching all Ghanaian children with birth registration services, provided the evidence required for the Births and Deaths Registry to tackle the birth registration challenge more strategically. 

 

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