2023-07-05 15:06:30
The registration of the child in the civil status is the condition of its existence in the eyes of the State. It is a fundamental right of the child. In Guinea, many parents neglect this right. The civil registrar of Matoto commune, Kémoko Dioubaté. He explains the problem of the birth certificate extract.
Ousmane Bangoura is 6 years old. As proof of his being to the world and to Guinea, he presents only a loose piece of paper, on which the matron has scribbled the day, time, place and date of his birth. Ignorance, negligence of parents. He is still not registered in the civil status register. Ousmane has thus far been deprived of his right to exist in the eyes of the state. “The child’s birth certificate is his first passport, his first right is his citizenship. We actually see that the children are not registered”, explains Kémoko Dioubaté, head of the civil status service in the commune of Matoto. “There is a confusion that parents make between registration and declaration of birth. When the child is born in the hospital, the paper given to the parents is a declaration of birth which is different from a registration in the official register of civil status. Some parents keep these declarations even though they are valid for two months. Exceeding this deadline means completely changing the procedure for registering the child”. And Kémoko Dioubaté added: “When the declaration exceeds the two-month deadline and the parent wants to obtain the birth certificate of his child, according to the law, the parent addresses the court which gives him a supplementary judgment which he presents to the civil registry to obtain the extract of the child’s birth certificate”.
Disregarding the normal registration procedure, parents from the Entag district take it easy, they contact the civil registry of the neighboring district, Tombolia. The head of the Matoto civil status service warns: “The civil status of Tombolia provides a secondary service. He celebrates marriages, he is not skilled in making birth certificates. The birth certificates he provides are fake. »
The issue of the ordinary birth certificate extract constitutes a pitfall for the biometric registration of citizens. And the problem seems to have a bright future ahead of it.
Mariama Keïta, intern
#Ignorance #negligence #parents