Birth Registration in Emergencies
Why is #birthregistration crucial during emergencies?
Registering a birth is the first step to knowing YOU exist. Without a birth certificate, how do you prove your name or your relationship to your parents?
Our #youthreporters hold a press conference with Plan’s Emergency Response Team.
Our reporters asked about recovery, distribution and support after #Typhoon #Haiyan!
#youthreporters in action!
Over 70 kids in the Philippines grew their journalism skills with a 3-day media training.
#Plan #Philippines #Haiyan
Plan Thailand: 2013 Annual Report
Activities, programmes and successes for 2013. http://plan-international.org/where-we-work/asia/thailand
For the young survivors of #TyphoonHaiyan, they have a lot of things they want to say. By listening to young voices we can build a better world for all.
#planresponds #typhoonhaiyan
Plan Pakistan: 2013 Annual Report
16-year-old Ashraful, from Bangladesh, knew he wanted a better education but didn’t realise it would lead him to a life on the streets.
In spite of the consequences, Ashraful took to the streets to pursue his dream and became one of Bangladesh’s estimated 680,000 street children.
Learn how Plan helped him find a safe place to sleep through its Street Children Development project: http://bit.ly/OTm8ds
The importance of birth registration in Indonesia’s slums
By Amrullah Amrullah, Child Protection Programme Manager for Plan International in Indonesia
Opportunities are few for those who live in Jakarta’s slums. That’s especially true for children - some collect plastic bottles and sort through trash, others play the banjo on local buses for spare change, making just enough money to get by. Worryingly, many of these children do not officially exist. Their parents cannot afford to pay for birth certificates and without a certificate their future is extremely limited.
With high costs and excessive red tape, obtaining a birth certificate in Indonesia can be a bureaucratic nightmare. But birth registration is absolutely critical. Without a legal identity, access to education and basic healthcare is denied. Marriage registration, a passport and the right to vote are also out of reach.
Data from the Ministry of Social Affairs in 2012 showed that there were 94,000 street children in Indonesia, including an estimated 7,000 in Jakarta. Only a fifth (22 per cent) had been registered.
Indonesia has one of the lowest rates of birth registration among countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam, for example, more than 90 per cent of the population is registered.
Last year, Plan surveyed five slums in Jakarta and found that more than 60 per cent of parents had never even tried to register their children. Across Indonesia, Plan estimates that as many as three million children every year join the 30 to 35 million in total who are unregistered.
The public services system often doesn’t provide adequate opportunities for street children to register, with a long list of documents required to meet the criteria. These include: Birth Notification, a Letter of Birth Report from the Village Head, Family Card or Letter of Domicile Notification and Parents’ Marriage/Divorce Certificate.
Plan’s survey found only 54 per cent of respondents had a birth notification for their children. The majority, 84 per cent, did not have a letter of birth report from their Village Head. Only around half had a Family Card/Letter of Domicile and only 40 per cent of respondents had a marriage certificate issued by the Civil Registration Office.
Politically, the state is obliged to develop a system that ensures child welfare and protection and recently the Ministry of Social Affairs launched a national child welfare programme. The goal of the programme is to give every child a savings account with a one-off deposit of around $150 (£90) to cover basic education and health costs. But without a birth certificate, unregistered children are unlikely to qualify.
Ani, who’s 15, doesn’t know where her father is which has meant she can’t get a birth certificate. To register, she needs her father’s ID card, her parents’ marriage certificate and a family card to be able to register. She is frustrated that she isn’t an official citizen of her country.
Tri, 15, attends an informal school and works as a street singer earning about $2 a day (£1.20). He is aware of the value of getting a birth certificate, especially for his education.
“My parents have divorced. My father is busy at work and he has no time to register for my birth certificate. He doesn’t even understand its importance,” he says.
Since 2012, Plan International has run a program on universal birth registration for street children in Jakarta, part-funded by the charity’s UK office and insurance provider Aviva. This programme is aimed at raising awareness among street children and their families on the importance of birth registration, and to help the government provide easily accessible birth registration.
Plan has already had some success after lobbying the government on birth registration. Last year the Indonesian Parliament changed the law to make registering births simpler and cheaper, scrapping fees and also removing the requirement that the certificate had to be issued where the birth took place. Already more than a thousand children have registered using the simplified procedure.
It shows what can be achieved by bringing together different partners from civil society, the corporate sector, the government and communities to help excluded children.
International Day of the Street Child is one way of raising awareness about the children who don’t exist and the value of birth registration in helping to give them a better, more optimistic future. The Street Child Consortium, of which Plan is a member, is encouraging people to #tweetforthestreet today (SAT) to help the voices of street children from across the world be heard.
onetwo-thuy