Three thousand and five hundred children in Mali are receiving free birth certificates following a sustained Plan project in the Timbuktu region.
Plan has already provided birth certificates to 500 children in the region through a previous project in 2014. The present initiative is targeting mostly IDPs and returning refugees in 30 communities and districts affected by the conflict in northern Mali, in the Timbuktu region.
No certificate, no future
Oumou, 14, is one of them and is in 8th grade at Alpha Moya School in Timbuktu. She is a very smart and bright girl. But last year, she dropped out in the second quarter when the school authorities asked her to provide her birth certificate before sitting for exam. Since childhood, Oumou knows her name but has no document to prove her identity. Her father who is a farmer and her mother who does petty trade could not offer her and her four siblings, this precious document.
Without a birth certificate, children cannot claim a legal identity and are vulnerable to trafficking, child labour and underage marriage as they do not legally exist and have no proof of their age. But now, Plan is on the ground working to ensure children from poorest families receive this documentation. Birth certificate is a right for every child.
Djitteye Hamoudi Kalil, headmaster at Alpha Moya School in Timbuktu believes it is a basic human right to be legally registered: "Here, parents do not registered children born at home, a situation which is very common in the area or they do not have the sum of XOF 200 (less than $1) needed to establish a birth certificate. Without birth certificates, many children drop out of school, losing an opportunity to receive a proper education”, he says.
Helping children to have an identity
Today Oumou is no longer afraid to be chased out of class for lack of birth certificates. "Plan officers came into my classroom and identified students who had no birth certificates. Some days later, they came back and this time with the documents ready. I was very happy to finally see my birth certificate ", Oumou says. She is now reassured to continue her studies and take her exams, dreaming of becoming Minister of Education one day.
Plan project is implemented in five circles in the Timbuktu region funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. It aims not only at rehabilitating social infrastructures for local community members and IDPs and returning refugees but also to ensure children have a legal identity. Plan is also targeting 600 local government representatives equipping them with knowledge about the importance of birth registration and the time frame within which to register children.
