LILONGWE, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- The government of Malawi is rolling out a mass child registration campaign targeting 4.6 million children under the age of 16 years, Minister of Homeland Security, Peter Mukhito, announced Friday at a press briefing in Lilongwe.
The minister said, currently, the targeted children have no legal identity documents and face barriers to essential services, with heightened risk of exploitation, statelessness, early marriage, child labour, child trafficking, and exclusion from vital social and economic opportunities.
He added that the national birth registration campaign will ensure that Malawi achieves the United Nation Sustainable Development Goal Target, which calls upon every country to ensure legal identity for all, including birth registration by 2030.
Until 2015, Malawi had been using colonial Birth and Death Registration Act that was enacted in 1904 and it did not make birth registration for Malawians mandatory.
Consequently, most children born before 2015 were never registered and they have no birth certificates.
However, the National Registration Act of 2010 made birth registration mandatory for every child born in Malawi, regardless of the nationality of their parents, ethnicity or religion.
According to the minister, since 2015, the National Registration Bureau (NRB) in Malawi has registered approximately 3.8 million children and newborns in the country's health facilities and communities.
The campaign will be held in 7 phases in health facilities and public primary schools, according to the minister.
The exercise will be undertaken with technical and financial support from Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention, UNICEF, the Community of Saint Egidio - BRAVO Programme, and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), according to the Minister. ■