Over half of Bangladeshi children under 5 don’t have birth registration
Fahima Begum, a 40-year-old domestic worker from Mirpur's Kazipara area, was desperately running to print and photocopy shops in her area over two days in order to apply for the birth certificate of her five-year-old daughter Sathi.
Fahima, who works part-time as a domestic help in six houses, took a day off as her daughter's birth certificate was required for school admission.
However, she was unable to do so because the Online Birth Registration Information System (online BRIS) server was not responding.
When asked why she did not register for Sathi within 45 days of her birth, as required by the Birth and Death Registration Act 2004, Fahima said, like many other parents in Bangladesh, she was completely unaware of the necessity.
When contacted, Brig Gen Md Jobaydul Islam, chief health officer of Dhaka North City Corporation, said that most people feel the necessity to register their children's births before school admissions, so they apply during December, January, and February, and the server, on average, takes much longer to respond than usual, causing problems.
However, in order to encourage people to register the birth of their children on time, DNCC has run several campaigns, including promoting the idea on the Sobar Dhaka app (DNCC's citizen portal) and presenting a tree sapling with each birth certificate, in collaboration with LankaBangla Finance Limited, for children under the age of two.
OVER HALF OF CHILDREN UNDER 5 HAVE NOT BEEN REGISTERED YET
But like Sathi, although Sustainable Development Goals 16.9 targets legal identity for all (including birth certificates) by 2030, with the proposed indicator "to increase the proportion of children under five years of age whose births have been registered with civil authority to 100 percent", more than half of the children in this age group in Bangladesh do not have their births registered.
UNICEF data, on the other hand, shows that only 37% of children under the age of five are currently registered. As a result, 10 million Bangladeshi children below the age of five do not exist officially.
Despite the fact that Bangladesh pledged to ensure "no one will be left behind" and recognised that a legal identity for all is a prerequisite for peaceful and inclusive societies, children who lack birth registration means that they have no legal identity which is crucial for the government to unlock social benefits such as education and healthcare for them and make the decisions about directing resources and planning of national policies.
According to the Sustainable Development Goals Bangladesh Progress Report 2020, prepared by the General Economics Division, Bangladesh Planning Commission, Ministry of Planning, the percentage of children under five years of age whose births have been registered with a civil authority has increased from 37 percent in 2012-13 to 56.2 percent in 2019.
The proportion is higher in rural areas at 56.8 percent than that of 54 percent in urban areas, it added.
The Office of the Registrar General, Birth and Death Registration (ORGBDR), however, aims to cross the milestone by 80 percent within 2020, and 100 percent in 2030, the report mentioned.
In 2001, the birth and death registration project began with UNICEF support under the Local Government Division and had been implemented in phases. In 2009, the birth and death registration information system (BRIS) was initiated to provide electronic registration. All this contributed to a significant improvement in birth registration for all, it mentioned.
On last October 6, LGRD Minister Muhammad Tajul Islam, however, declared that the government aims to register the birth of everyone by 2024.
On the other hand, data from ORGBDR showed that they have so far completed the birth registration of 49 percent of children under 5 by 2021, and have been working relentlessly to increase the percentage by taking different measures.
"For example, we have been routinely sending the estimated crude birth rate (the annual number of live births per 1,000 population) which is now 18, to each of our registrars, so that they can fill up the targets," said the former Registrar General Mustaqim Billah Farooqui, who is also the additional secretary of LGRD.
"But there is lack of awareness issue, as many educated and aware parents are not coming to register the birth of their children within 45 days of birth," he added.
In terms of hassles in registering, the former registrar general said that they have been receiving a lot of applications -- especially around one lakh applications per day before school admissions --which go beyond the capacity of the server.
"If we could get these applications all year round, it wouldn't be so much of a problem," he said.
The data from the ORGBDR shows the total number of birth registration in Bangladesh has reached 19.91 crores by the end of 2021, while the rate of death is 20.22 lakh of the total population.
When asked the reason behind the higher birth registration rate, Farooqui said that the data included the registration of people who have died already.
"At the same time, there are some duplications. For example, before the emergence of the electronic registration system, people manually prepared the birth certificate on their own will and needs during admission in schools, SSC registration and child marriage purposes," he said.
"The rate of duplication has decreased a lot due to online registration. We have been taking some special measures so that the multiple registrations get blocked, which will help to have the actual data," he added.
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