From Kayemo News
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Lagos Government and the National Population Commission (NPC) have collaborated to boost e-birth registration, so as to give children true legal identity.
This was just as UNICEF reiterated the need for the country to adopt e-birth registration exercise towards effective planning, execution and socio-economic development of the nation.
The Chief of UNICEF field office for South West, Celine Lafoucriere stated this while giving her remarks during the opening of a media dialogue on e-birth registration in Lagos on Tuesday.
The event was held in collaboration with the Lagos state ministry of Youth and Social Development and the National Population Commission (NPC).
She explained UNICEF is committed to ensuring that every child gets legal identity, which she said is a fundamental right of the children, adding that e-birth registration would help eliminate challenges being faced by parents in registering their children.
Lafoucriere stated that birth registration would in no small measure assist governments and organisations at all levels to formulate policies and programmes across education, health and other sectors in the interest of the children and the society.
According to her, the media dialogue was held in achieving the drive for effective sensitization and advocacy on the need for parents and nursing mothers to register their children.
She said, ” Birth registration is a fundamental right of every child, without that the child is invisible and besides that it helps us to build an inclusive society because registered children have access to basic social services such as protection, healthcare, education.
” UNICEF is strongly committed in Nigeria to support the federal and state governments to drive e-birth registration throughout Nigeria so that no child is left behind.
” E-birth registration is a formidable opportunity and a game changer. It enables us to have faster, reliable and efficient birth registration processes and do away with issues of geographical distances that often prevent parents from registering their children.
” It is also a great opportunity to have a reliable civil registration system in Nigeria that generates the necessary data, to have an effective planning, policy implementation that impacts positively on the lives of the children in Nigeria.”
The UNICEF child protection specialist, Denis Onoise said the e-birth registration would help the country in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 16.9 by 2030 which entails providing legal identity for all including free birth registration.
According to Onoise, UNICEF is targeting over nine million children under five years and over four million for children under one in e-birth registration by the end of 2024.
On his part, the Lagos state director of NPC, Bamidele Sadiku said the e-birth registration would help the country to link the civil registration and vital statistics system with that of the National Identity Management for robust data storage.
He revealed that the e-birth registration would enable policy makers to capture the children in their social services in the area of healthcare, safety, education among others.
The permanent secretary, Lagos state ministry of Youth and Social Development, Mrs Toyin Oke-Oyanyintolu said the e-birth registration would afford the state governments with necessary data and statistics of children for adequate planning and implementation of programmes and policies.
Represented by the Director of Public Affairs in the ministry, Mrs Adeola Adebisi, she commended UNICEF and the NPC for the collaboration, saying the administration of governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu is determined to prioritize the safety and inclusion of the children in its developmental programs.
