CI-NEWS

Digitization of Cameroon’s Civil Status Registry: Pathway to country’s Emergence by 2035.

2020-04-20

No: 491

Digitization of Cameroon’s Civil Status Registry: Pathway to country’s Emergence by 2035

By *Aminateh Nkemngu.

Despite awareness raising campaigns for the issue of birth certificates, as well as efforts at the legal and administrative reorganization of civil status registries in Cameroon, a large part of the population does not resort to civil status services.

The National Institute of Statistics indicates that the registration rate at birth of children under five, which had been declining continuously over the past 20 years, moving from 70 % in 2006 to 61 % in 2011 experienced a slight increase to 66% in 2014 at the national level.

This may be as a result of the amendment of the Law on civil status in Cameroon in 2011, which increased the legal timeline for birth registration from 30 to 90 days. The lowest registration rates are in the Far North region (42%) and South West region (55 %).

Considering the latest figures, one third of children are not registered at birth, and do not have birth certificates. The issue is all the more serious in rural areas where 48% of children under five are registered, than in urban areas (81% of children under five registered), and the poorest quintile is the most affected, with only 28% of registered births.

Yet, the civil status is a legal institution and the registration of births, marriages and deaths is compulsory, permanent and continuous as per the Law. Beyond its legal and statistical functions, civil status registration has an impact on development and security, which makes it a pillar in the process towards the country’s emergence by 2035.

An unregistered and unidentified person has no legal existence. The registration of civil status events is therefore the sole means to determine and protect identities, citizenship and incidentally property rights and access to services.

Thus, the designing, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of national development policies and programs are closely related to the availability of a reliable system for the registration of vital events and to the production of ensuring statistics.

Indeed, the monitoring of various targets of the Sustainable Development Goals depends on the availability of reliable data on fertility, mortality and death causes, which may result from the exploitation of vital events registered continuously and appropriately.

As regards security, wars and the surge of terrorism and national and cross-border criminality confer a security function to civil status events.

The security situation concerning Boko Haram attacks in the Far North Region of Cameroon and the ensuing movement of the populations, are a particularly strong motivation for the development of a new civil status registration system.

Despite the crucial importance of the issue, it appears that like in most African countries, the necessary attention has not always been drawn to the registration of civil status events and production of civil status statistics in Cameroon.

In addition, users do not show much interest in civil status services, because its importance is not well understood. Between a supply that is below standard and a low public demand, civil status registration systems are incomplete and unable to provide the required statistics for the design, implementation and monitoring of development policies and programs in Cameroon.

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Digitization of Cameroon’s Civil Status Registry: Pathway to country’s Emergence by 2035.