Name, document, future: Cameroon’s battle to register every child | Story

Garoua and Tiko, Cameroon A year ago, Oumarou Sanda, the 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 increase the census.

This information, which was issued by UNICEF with the support of the Cameroonian government, showed many months of work to solve one problem of child protection that continues but is often not seen: the lack of legal information for thousands of children.

Under Cameroonian law, every child has the right to a birth certificate. Parents are expected to register children born within 90 days at no cost. After that time, registration becomes more difficult, and after a year, families must go through court processes that are often expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to navigate.

For many parents, this process is out of reach.

Aissatou Bouba, a mother of four who lives in Garoua 2, said: “One of my oldest children was sent home years ago from school because we didn’t have his papers.

This changed in 2024 when he brought his last child to the hospital where the staff registered the birth immediately after birth, and provided the necessary documents to establish his identity.

His experiences reflect the true reality. According to the Ministry of Basic Education in Cameroon, more than 1.5 million children, about 30 percent of primary school children, are enrolled without birth certificates.

Without that documentation, the consequences often show up later in life.

Anna Enanga Epse Itoe, head of the government office in the Tiko Council in the South West region of Cameroon, Anna Enanga Epse Itoe said:

“It will not be possible to take the public exam. It will also be impossible to get a national certificate, which is required to get many jobs,” he told Al Jazeera.

UNICEF estimates that, of the 560,000 babies born in hospitals in 2023, only 43.77 percent were registered. This gap leaves many children at risk of further education.

Alexis Mayang, UNICEF’s child protection specialist in Yaounde, said: “Undocumented children are difficult to trace, see or protect. They can be moved across borders with few checks,” she told Al Jazeera.

He added that in conflict-affected areas, lack of information increases the risk of rape, including recruitment into armed groups.

The answer to the security gap

The need to address these gaps grew after the first Conference of Mayors on Birth Registration in April 2024, where local officials signed a document encouraging the promotion of birth registration in their municipalities.

After the meeting, UNICEF, working with the government and local partners, supported the release of the “My Name” campaign, which aims to identify and register children without legal documents in 360 Cameroon councils and 14 cities.

Since its inception, officials involved in the project say more than 17,000 children have been registered.

Townships were evaluated based on how well they had implemented registration reforms, including implementing registration services in hospitals and identifying undocumented children who did not attend school.

In Tiko, in the southwest, officials brought registration documents closer to rural areas, working with leaders to collect birth certificates from villages.

“In Tiko, people come every day to register their children and receive birth certificates,” says Enanga. “We have issued documents to thousands of children.”

In order to overcome these problems, the chiefs of these areas took part in a major task of registering children born in hard-to-reach areas before sending letters to the council offices.

In Garoua 2, the authorities took action. Faced with delays caused by handwritten documents, municipalities switched to digital systems, allowing licenses to be issued within minutes.

Obstacles that remain

Despite this success, officials say there are serious problems.

In many areas, registration is not a priority, some parents only follow the procedure when children are not allowed to go to school or are prevented from taking national exams.

Schools are often the first place to advocate, especially in elementary school, where undocumented students are denied critical assessments.

Deep social barriers remain. Child protection workers say that in some rural areas, harmful practices persist, including beliefs that girls do not need literature or education. This practice helps prevent undocumented children from having documents that show they are at risk of early marriage.

Government officials and community workers say traditional and religious leaders are increasingly participating in awareness-raising campaigns aimed at changing attitudes and encouraging early birth registration.

Globally, UNICEF estimates that 166 million children under the age of five are unregistered. In Cameroon, officials say that closing the gap will not only depend on changes in the administrative system, but also on changing the way people define the legal existence of a child.

“I was happy to know that my son can study without any obstacle,” Bouba told Al Jazeera.