EDITORIAL: Embrace mass civil registration exercise

A massive civil registration exercise is set to be carried out by the Ministry of Local Government with support of other key stakeholders. The exercise is targeting mainly children who are denied registration at birth because of lack of identification of both or one of the parents. However, the Ministry wants to ensure that no child born in Rwanda is denied the right to be recorded in the civil registry, with or without both parents. Most of the cases involve children whose fathers have disowned them or where the mother does not have proof of paternity. The move by the Ministry is a good gesture and will go a long way in helping to establish the exact number of children born in the country, which will consequently help in proper planning at the policy level. When some children are denied an opportunity to be registered, it also means that they are denied a chance to benefit from national services since planning will only focus on the known registered children leaving out those that don’t appear in the registry. Every parent of a child who was not registered should embrace the one month massive civil registration exercise that is expected to start on November 23 across the country. The exercise will be carried out in conjunction with the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion together with other partners and it will encourage people to register births, deaths, adoption and divorces. If this exercise is successful, it will ensure accurate figures are captured to ease national planning, among other benefits. Civil status registration is a prerequisite for any country’s development because is a key aspect in national planning. It also makes it easy when seeking other services such as getting a passport, claiming for pension scheme, processing a loan among others as an adult. Let’s give every child a chance to be registered.

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EDITORIAL: Embrace mass civil registration exercise