A name, a document, a future: Cameroon’s fight to register every child | News
Garoua and Tiko, Cameroon – A year after being named Cameroon’s Citizenship Champion for its efforts to enhance birth registration, Oumarou Sanda, the mayor of Garoua 2, celebrated a significant achievement. This recognition, supported by UNICEF in partnership with the Cameroonian government, highlighted essential progress in addressing the lack of legal identity documents for thousands of children in the country.
According to Cameroon’s civil status law, every child is entitled to a birth certificate, and parents are required to register births within 90 days at no cost. Failure to do so complicates the registration process, with families facing costly and time-consuming court procedures after one year.
Many parents still find the system out of reach. Aissatou Bouba, a mother of four from Garoua 2, shared her own struggles. “One of my eldest children was sent home years ago from school because we didn’t have his official papers,” she recounted. However, her experience changed in 2024 when her youngest child was registered immediately after birth at a local health facility, providing the necessary documentation for his legal identity.
This situation is reflected in a report from Cameroon’s Ministry of Basic Education, which states that over 1.5 million children, roughly 30 percent of primary school students, are enrolled in school without birth certificates. The absence of this documentation can lead to long-term consequences, particularly regarding education and access to national identity cards.
“If a child lacks a birth certificate, they will not gain admission to secondary school,” noted Anna Enanga epse Itoe, head of the civil status bureau at the Tiko Council in the southwest region. “This can also hinder their ability to sit for public examinations and to obtain a national identity card, which is required for many services,” she explained.
UNICEF reports that only 43.77 percent of the 560,000 births recorded in health facilities in 2023 were officially registered. This gap exposes many children to risks that extend beyond educational barriers. UNICEF child protection specialist Alexis Mayang emphasized that undocumented children are more difficult to trace and monitor, making them vulnerable to exploitation, especially in conflict-affected areas.
To combat these issues, momentum grew after the first Mayors’ Forum on Birth Registration in April 2024, where local authorities committed to strengthening civil registration systems. Following the forum, UNICEF, in collaboration with the government and local partners, launched the “My Name” campaign to identify and register unregistered children across Cameroon’s 360 councils.
Since the campaign’s inception, more than 17,000 children have been registered. Municipalities were evaluated on the effectiveness of their registration systems, including establishing civil registration services in health facilities and identifying out-of-school children lacking documentation. In Tiko, officials worked alongside traditional leaders to facilitate birth declarations from remote areas.
“In Tiko, people are coming every day to register their children and obtain birth certificates,” Enanga stated. Local chiefs have played a vital role in documenting births in hard-to-reach areas and forwarding records to council offices. In Garoua 2, authorities shifted to a digital civil status system to address delays associated with handwritten registers, enabling the issuance of certificates within minutes.
Despite these advancements, significant challenges remain. Many communities still do not prioritize birth registration, and parents often only engage with the process when children face barriers to education.
Schools frequently act as the first point of enforcement, particularly at the primary level, where students without documentation are turned away from important assessments. Additionally, ingrained social norms in some rural areas perpetuate the belief that girls do not need formal documentation or education, further contributing to the issue of undocumented children.
Officials and community workers are increasingly involving traditional and religious leaders in awareness campaigns to reshape these perceptions and promote earlier birth registration. According to UNICEF, an estimated 166 million children under the age of five globally remain unregistered. In Cameroon, addressing this gap will require not only administrative reforms but also a shift in community perspectives on the legal existence of children.
Bouba expressed relief at her son’s new opportunities, stating, “I was happy knowing that my son could get educated without any hindrance.”