Birth registration campaign protects Nigerian children's rights
Source: United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
Date: 09 Sep 2008
[Old article, looking for updates]

By Samuel Kaalu

KANO, Nigeria, 9 September 2008 – In the ancient town of Dawakin Kudu, in Kano State, northwest Nigeria, Aisha Sanusi, 13, proudly displays the certificate she recently acquired through a state-wide, door-to-door exercise in birth registration. Her brother, Nura Sanusi, 15, is also proud of his newly issued birth-registration certificate.

The Sanusi children represent the success of this 'mop-up' exercise, which targeted roughly 2.3 million unregistered children in Nigeria – most of whom were not registered at birth.

"This birth certificate gives me an identity and a gateway to many possibilities," says Aisha. "With it, I can secure a Nigerian passport easily, facilitate my registration in a higher institution or prove my real age to prospective employers, if need be."

The registration campaign was initiated by the Kano State Government. Technical support came from UNICEF and other partners such as the National Population Commission, the only agency legally authorized to register the birth of children in Nigeria.

Clearing the backlog

Although Nigeria is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child – whose Article 7 prescribes the mandatory registration to give children an identity at birth – only 30 per cent of children here are registered at birth.

Nigeria domesticated the international Convention by enacting the Child Rights Act (CRA) at the national level in 2003. Sixteen of the country's 36 states currently have the CRA in place, but this has not translated into birth registration on a massive scale.

Mindful of the large number of unregistered children in Nigeria, UNICEF encouraged the convening of a strategic meeting with representatives of the National Population Commission, the States Universal Basic Education Boards and the Ministries for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs.

"That meeting resolved that all the states that had a backlog of unregistered births should define specific periods within which to clear the backlog," says UNICEF Nigeria Child Protection Specialist Maryam Enyiazu, who is managing the project.

The Kano State Government established a special task force to plan, implement, monitor and evaluate the registration exercise.

The task force set up a public enlightenment campaign at the state and local levels involving the media, traditional and religious leaders, and government mobilization officers. (Among the latter were state and local officials from the National Orientation Agency.) They were charged with generating awareness, acceptance and demand for birth registration in 44 Local Government Areas.

In collaboration with the authorities in Kano, UNICEF ensured that a total of 4,140 special birth-registration staff were trained to go door to door.

The District Head of Dawakin Kudu, Alhaji Yusuf Bayero – one of the traditional rulers who gave full support to the exercise – hopes birth-registration efforts will continue. "Whilst thanking the government for the full mobilization of traditional leaders for the mop-up birth-registration exercise, I'd like to call on all the relevant government agencies to ensure that birth registration is sustained," he says.

UN talks fail to set climate target

Some had hoped China's Hu, would point the way forward for action on climate change [AFP] China has pledged to put a "notable" brake on its rapidly rising carbon emissions, but disappointed those hoping for a firm numerical commitment.

Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday that Beijing would pledge to cut "carbon intensity", or the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each dollar of economic output, over the decade to 2020.

His promise is a landmark because China has previously rejected rich nations' demands for measurable curbs on its emissions, arguing that economic development must come first while millions of its citizens still live in poverty.

But the leader of the world's biggest emitter dashed hopes that he would unveil a hard target to kickstart stalled climate talks due to be reconvened in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December aimed at negotiating a broader climate pact to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Hu said only that carbon intensity would come down "by a notable margin by 2020 from the 2005 levels", which still leaves Beijing and other major emitters room to manoeuvre before the talks.

Rich nations are likely to come under further pressure at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh later this week to commit to dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Incidences of heat waves and droughts are on the increase and there has been an acceleration in the melting of glaciers and the recession of the Greenland ice sheet, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said earlier this week.

Tim Flannery, the chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council and professor at Sydney's Macquarie University, told Al Jazeera that there are "a large number of people who are disappointed" with the lack of substantive progress at Tuesday's climate summit.

"This day really should have been a day of triumph for climate diplomacy ... we would have hoped for great progress, but on the surface at least, I think, it appears that progress has been quite limited," he said from New York.

Commenting on China's pledge, he said "it is a positive step but a 'notable margin' is not something you can measure". Todd Stern, the US special envoy on climate change and one of the most vocal critics of China's emissions policy, said he "didn't hear new initiatives so much" in Hu's speech.

"It depends on what the number is and he didn't indicate the extent to which those reductions would be made," he said. But Xie Zhenhua, China's most senior environment official, later said China would soon unveil a target, based on projections that by 2020 it will double its use of renewable energy and dramatically cut energy use per dollar of GDP.

Flannery said Hu and Barack Obama, the US president, both "offered rhetoric, they offered promise, but not substantial, documented, commitment and that's what we need at this stage".

Indonesia's province of Aceh has passed a new law making adultery punishable by stoning to death, a member of the province's parliament has said.

The law also imposes severe sentences for rape, homosexuality, alcohol consumption and gambling.

Opponents had tried to delay the law, saying more debate was needed because it imposes capital punishment.

Sharia law was partially introduced in Aceh in 2001, as part of a government offer to pacify separatist rebels.

A peace deal in 2005 ended the 30-year insurgency, and many of the former rebels have now entered Aceh's government, which enjoys a degree of autonomy from the central government in Jakarta.