Despite efforts put into increasing the birth registration to 95 percent by 2022, a significant number of people are still entering this world and leaving it without being registered anywhere, the National Institute of Statistics Rwanda (NISR) has said.

According to UNICEF, birth registration is the process of establishing a permanent and official record of a child’s existence, proving his or her with legal recognition and identity. 

At a minimum, the UN body says that birth registration establishes a legal record of where the child was born and who his or her parents are. Birth registration is required for a child to get a birth certificate – his or her first legal proof of identity. It is considered a right.

The information collected from birth registration records helps the government to decide where and how to spend money, and what areas to focus on for development programmes, such as education and immunization.

Details contained in the latest NISR’s Rwanda Vital Statistics Report 2020 indicate that timely registered births fell from 78 percent in 2019 to 72.3 percent in 2020.

As a result, the country registered an increase in late registrations from 22 percent to 27.7 percent.

According to the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) strategy for 2017-2022, Rwanda seeks to increase birth and death registration and certification to 95 percent and 90 percent respectively.

Although it is higher than the sub-Saharan Africa average of 44 per cent, it still remains lower than the global target of 90 per cent by 2025.

Several challenges

In a telephone interview with The New Times, the vice president of the parliamentary standing committee on social affairs, Frank Habineza, said that members of his committee had undertaken field visits around the country in October last year to review the progress made in processes of birth and death registration.

Previously, all civil registration procedures including death and birth registration had to take place at the sector level within 15 days.

However, following the amendment of the law governing persons and family in February 2020, registration of birth and death must be done within 30 days of the event.

Parents can now have their children legally registered at any health facility as soon as they are born.

Habineza said that on their field visits, the committee members found out that although this required a doctor and administrator at each of these district hospitals and health centres to be trained and given the equipment needed to do the registration, the latter were yet to get this support by the end of 2020.

"We are yet to do a follow-up but we advised that the late registration done at the Sector level and at the hospital are both linked to the National ID Agency database so that the civil register is updated in a timely manner,” he said.

Although all expectant women are advised to do at least three antenatal visits within the course of their pregnancy and advised to deliver their children in a health facility, Habineza said that there is still a number of them that are still giving birth from home.

This means that the child will be registered late or not at all.

He added that some cultural norms like the ‘baby-naming ceremony’ practices predominantly in rural areas were also still discouraging many from registering births and deaths on time.

"We also found that the culture of baby-naming ceremonies is still big in rural areas. This means they will wait until the child is about one month old and officially named before having him or her registered,” he said.

More sensitisation

Although the law governing persons and family provides for a ministerial order determining penalties for late and delayed registration, the order is yet to be enacted.

In an interview with this publication over weekend, the Acting Director-General of Territorial Administration at the Ministry of Local Government Alex Ingangare said that the draft was shelved after the government called for more sensitisation efforts to be prioritised instead of punishment.

"It was agreed that more efforts need to be put into making the citizens understand the value of registering births and deaths. They felt that while the penalties will come at some point, they are currently not the priority,” he said.

Ingangare hailed the government’s decision adding that at least 50,000 children are registered every year during the celebrations to mark the national civil registration day, an indication that the masses are yet to understand why timely registration is important.

He added that besides sensitisation, the idea to introduce registration at the hospital would go a long way in improving the number of births that are registered in a timely manner.

According to the Director-General of the National Identification Agency (NIDA), Josephine Mukesha, civil registration and vital statistics is not a new a new concept in Rwanda but it is being improved to provide timely and complete data that can support informed policy making, implementation and monitoring of development plans.

"Besides being an SDG target on its own, an improved and well-functioning CRVS system is the best source of continuous and up-to-date information on birth, death and population statistics. These statistics, in turn, serve as the denominator for a wide range of population-based targets and indicators in the SDGs,” she said.

According to NIDA, the new CRVS system will begin with the registration and certification of the events of birth and death, learning from which will inform approaches for adding other events into the system.

Rwanda recognises nine vital events: birth, death, marriage, annulment of marriage, divorce, guardianship and adoption among others.