Several factors related to the provision and other endogenous factors help to understand the
problem. Indeed, indigenous people generally live in the forest. Therefore, their living
environment has not facilitated a quantitative and qualitative improvement of the services
involved in birth registration: health services, civil services and courts. To this low use of
health services due to the scarcity of services, we can add the insufficient number of
registration centres. All camps are equipped with secondary centres. Courts are based in the
Department administrative centres. The distances to be travelled are also considerable in the
case of late reporting. Therefore, adults without birth certificates are in large numbers in these
communities.
In general, the cultural context is favourable to late registration. Beyond the costs of delivery,
the problem is that the registration centres require additional fees. The issue of covering
travel-related expenses is an additional barrier to the birth registration.
In addition to the difficulties of geographical accessibility, the problem of utilisation of health
services and civil registration is explained by the costs of the services. Although registration
is free, poor families are forced to pay for some services (antenatal, fact sheets, regional
taxes, requisition, etc.) before receiving the birth certificate. The importance of access issues
is justified by the very low level of life of these populations.
Similarly, the use of health facilities for childbirth is not a common practice among
indigenous women. Traditional medicine has been developed to meet the delivery
requirements and TBAs play an important role in these communities.
According to the 2008 study by the Ministry of Territorial Administration and
Decentralisation (Directorate General of Territorial Administration) with the support of
UNICEF, indigenous women say that they are not encouraged to do antenatal and childbirth
in modern health centres because the staff there abuses them. This kind of attitude is not
likely to generate better use of health services, and those of birth registration in particular.
Hence the importance of the practice of home deliveries which limits the systematic reporting
of births since the heads of villages and households are often unaware that they also have the
obligation to report the birth to the civil registrar.
This is also the case for the social relations of the Bantu towards indigenous groups, which
are often tainted with ethnocentrism and discriminatory behaviour.
To date, there are no statistics available on the number of refugee children who received birth
certificates. However, the 04-2010 Act of 14 June 2010 in particular articles 13, 14, 16, 17
confers the same rights of birth registration to refugee children.
Faced with this situation, the government will: (i) ensure the improvement of indigenous
people’s access to basic social services through the National Action Plan on improving
indigenous people's quality of life; (ii) implement the strategic framework on the registration
of births from 2009 to 2013. The implementation of this strategy requires adequate resources.
Also, the support of development partners including the European Union and United Nations
agencies (UNICEF and UNFPA) is requested.
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