190,000 school children without birth certificates in East Region.

The disturbing number of children without the vital document, is said to have risen from 140,000 to 190,000, between 2019 and 2023.

This information was disclosed by the National Civil Status Registration Office, known by its French acronym, BUNEC.

According to BUNEC, the continuous increase is largely attributed to the ignorance of parents to fulfil legal requirements to acquire the civil document.

A mother of two, whose only name we got as Josephine, is quoted by Data Cameroon, a statistics agency, as having confessed that: "I didn't know the birth certificate procedure because I gave birth in the community".

Réné Ndongmoui, one of her sons, was born on March 13, 1998, in Daïgène, a village in the Mandjou Subdivision, East Region. Aged 25 today, neither he nor his brother, Célestin Esaï, born a year earlier, are registered in a birth register. Their 47-year-old mother, Joséphine, also does not have one.       

Sali Mbivoung, main facilitator of the Association for the Fight Against all Forms of Violence, ALUCOV, is also quoted as having said, despite the work they have been able to do since 2022, there is still more to be done. 

"We have registered more than 1,000 birth certificate requests in this village since 2022. In the Mandjou Subdivision in general, in 24 villages out of 25, where we worked, more than 60% of the population does not own birth certficates,” Mbivoung said.

According to BUNEC, the East Region registered around 190,000 children enrolled in Primary Schools without birth certificates, in 2023.

In other parts of the country, it stated, children are deprived of education for lack of birth certificates. 

According to the Ministry of Secondary Education, it is compulsory for children to present their birth certificates before continuing with their education after the primary level.

140,000 pupils without birth certificate in 2019

Meanwhile, a joint survey by the Ministry of Basic Education, MINEDUB, and the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, disclosed that 140,000 school-going children did not have birth certificates in 2019. That is an increase of 50,000 in four years.

A source at the East Regional Delegation of the Ministry of Social Affairs is quoted as having said: “The phenomenon is real, it is for this reason we are working with associations to raise awareness among parents, especially women, to declare births on time.” 

Jean Pierre Akam, the president of the Movement for the Rights of Citizens for Civil Society, blamed the State for the prevailing situation.

Akam is quoted as having said: “The secondary civil status centres lack staff and equipment. At the same time, some secretaries in the municipalities issue false certificates without stubs to naive citizens without being worried”.

It should be noted that in June 2023, ahead of the International Day of the African Child, rights groups and officials in Cameroon distributed birth certificates to 30,000 of several million children denied education for lack of the document. 

Though the document is free for babies younger than 90 days old, older children have to spend about 12,000 FCFA to have birth certificates in a long process that involves officials of the Justice Ministry.

As a result of the ongoing conflicts in the North West and South West regions, which has displaced over 750,000 people, several thousand birth certificates have been lost or destroyed, which account for the increase in children without birth certificates in that part of the country. 

By Etoh Christelle* & Clinton Tumenta* -Journalism students on internship