A name, a document, a future: Cameroon’s fight to register every child
Efforts to expand birth registration in Cameroon are gaining ground, but millions of children remain undocumented. Garoua and Tiko, Cameroon – A year ago, Oumarou
Efforts to expand birth registration in Cameroon are gaining ground, but millions of children remain undocumented. Garoua and Tiko, Cameroon – A year ago, Oumarou Sanda, mayor of Garoua 2 in northern Cameroon, raised a trophy above his head after his municipality was named Cameroon’s Citizenship Champion for its efforts to expand birth registration. The recognition, awarded through UNICEF-supported initiatives in partnership with the Cameroonian government, marked months of work to address one of the country’s most persistent but often invisible child protection gaps: the absence of legal identity for thousands of children. Under Cameroon’s civil status law, every child has the right to a birth certificate. Parents are expected to register births within 90 days at no cost. After that period, registration becomes more complex, and after one year, families must go through court procedures that are often costly, time-consuming, and difficult to navigate. For many parents, that system remains out of reach. “One of my eldest children was sent home years ago from school because we didn’t have his official papers,” says Aissatou Bouba, a mother of four living in Garoua 2. That changed in 2024 when she brought her youngest child to a local health facility where staff registered the birth immediately after delivery, issuing the documents needed to establish his legal identity.
Her experience reflects a wider reality. According to Cameroon’s Ministry of Basic Education, more than 1.5 million children, about 30 percent of primary school pupils, are enrolled without birth certificates. Without that documentation, the consequences often emerge later in life. “If a child stays without a birth certificate, the child will not have admission into secondary school,” says Anna Enanga epse Itoe, head of the civil status bureau at the Tiko Council in Cameroon’s southwest region. “It will be impossible to sit for public examinations. It will also be impossible to obtain a national identity card, which is needed to access many services,” she told Al Jazeera. UNICEF estimates that, of the 560,000 births recorded in health facilities in 2023, only 43.77 percent were officially registered. The gap leaves many children exposed to risks that extend beyond education. “Children without documentation are harder to trace, monitor, or protect,” says Alexis Mayang, a UNICEF child protection specialist based in Yaounde. “They can be moved across borders with fewer checks,” he told Al Jazeera. He added that in conflict-affected areas, the lack of identification increases vulnerability to exploitation, including recruitment into armed groups. A response to a protection gap The push to address these gaps gained momentum after the first Mayors’ Forum on Birth Registration in April 2024, where local authorities signed a charter committing to strengthen civil registration systems in their municipalities.
The BriefWire