The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Monday hailed Tanzania’s new simplified birth registration system for under-five children saying the system will help more children in the country to claim their rights and be protected.
“Every child has the right to an identity. A birth certificate is a vital record that documents the birth of a child,” said UNICEF acting representative in Tanzania Rene Van Dongen.
The UNICEF official said the right to be registered immediately after birth, to have a name and acquire a nationality is every child’s right.
He said the simplified birth registration program was aimed at ensuring that millions of children under five years old, who were “invisible” in the nation’s records, will now be “visible”.
The UNICEF official spoke at an event to launch the implementation of the simplified birth registration system for Tanga and Kilimanjaro regions where in the next two months more than 580,000 under-five children are expected to receive a birth certificate.
Tanga and Kilimanjaro join 16 other regions where more than 4.6 million children under the age of five have been registered since the program started to be implemented in 2013.
The new system has resulted in an overall increase of certification of under-fives in these regions from less than 10 percent to more than 80 percent.
Emmy Hudson, Acting Administrator General and Chief Executive Officer of the Registration, Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency (RITA), responsible for the program, said the new system significantly accelerated birth registration in Tanzania.
“The system makes it easier for children and their families to access the entitlement of a birth certificate,” she said.
