Wednesday 03 September
2008, San José, Costa Rica
NICARAGUA:
Name and Identity for
Thousands of Indigenous
Children
By José Adán Silva
BILWI, Nicaragua (IPS) -
Some 250,000 indigenous
children and adolescents
who had no legal
identity in Nicaragua
are in the process of
being registered -- an
essential step towards
achieving recognition of
their basic human
rights.
This was achieved by the
"Right to a Name and
Nationality" programme
run by Save the
Children, Plan
International, UNICEF
(the United Nations
children’s fund),
Nicaragua’s Supreme
Electoral Council (CSE)
and regional and
municipal authorities.
"A person who is not
registered has no last
name and not even a
first name, because
rural families and
society call children
whatever they want,
which means children
grow up without even
having their own name,"
UNICEF official Hugo
Rodríguez, a consultant
for the programme, told
IPS.
Five years ago, human
rights groups and
universities in
Nicaragua expressed
concern about the fact
that around 500,000
youngsters in indigenous
communities in the
eastern North Atlantic
Autonomous Region (RAAN)
and the South Atlantic
Autonomous Region (RAAS)
had no birth
certificates.
An investigation
indicated that nearly 40
percent of children in
Nicaragua are not
legally registered and
thus do not figure in
the country’s
demographic statistics,
said Rodríguez, a
statistician.
In indigenous areas on
the Atlantic coast and
in central and northern
Nicaragua, researchers
found native communities
where 100 percent of the
children and
adolescents, and a
portion of the adults,
had never been inscribed
in the civil register.
These findings led to
the start of a mission
that has registered
97,000 children and
teenagers in the RAAN,
out of 100,000 minors
without a legal
identity, in the past
four and a half years.
The efforts expanded
this year to the RAAS,
where the goal is to
register 100,000
youngsters, and to the
province of Nueva
Guinea, south of that
area, where about 50,000
minors have no birth
certificates.
"There were communities
where not even the
parents were registered
before, let alone their
descendants, and the
entire community had to
get involved to help
them remember dates,
last names, addresses
and other information
about their relatives,"
Susana Marley, a Miskito
community leader in the
village of Waspam, along
the banks of the Coco
river on the border with
Honduras, told IPS.
Marley mentioned cases
of people who travelled
five days by river to
register their children,
and chose names and even
last names for them on
the spot, at the time of
registration. "They
couldn't even agree on
what their children’s
names were," she said.
Last year in Waspam, the
Health Ministry reported
the births of 1,801
children, but only 144
figured in the records
of the local civil
register.
UNICEF staff and
municipal authorities
with whom IPS spoke
agreed that the main
cause of the problem,
besides the lack of
education, is the
extreme poverty plaguing
the country’s indigenous
people, 80 percent of
whom live on less than a
dollar a day, according
to United Nations
figures.
"People can’t afford to
miss a single day of
work in their fishing or
farming activities, to
leave the villages to
register their
children," said Marley.
The programme has
already had an impact.
According to the CSE,
after the project was
completed in the RAAN,
the voters list had
expanded by between 33
and 45 percent in the
different
municipalities.
CSE magistrate José Luis
Villavicencio
highlighted the progress
made by the programme
and commented to IPS
that the universal
registration of births
"is an important task
for strengthening the
country’s institutional
capacity."
"If a municipality does
not have exact
information on how many
citizens live there, it
is impossible to design
accurate management
plans for local
development, and many
people are left without
the possibility of
voting and exercising
their citizen rights,"
he said.
Article 7 of the United
Nations Convention on
the Rights of the Child
states that "The child
shall be registered
immediately after birth
and shall have the right
from birth to a name,
(and) the right to
acquire a nationality".
The programme has been
completed in the RAAN,
and universal
registration of births
will continue in the
future thanks to
training received by
municipal authorities
and community
organisations, Rodríguez
explained.
In the RAAS, meanwhile,
several municipalities
have already been
declared free of
unregistered children.
In late August, UNICEF
reported that more than
8,000 minors in the
municipalities of Corn
Island and Bluefields
had received birth
certificates, as the
first stage of the
project came to an end.
The process of data
collection, registration
and issuing of birth
certificates was carried
out by the Caribbean
Coastal Centre for
Autonomous Human Rights
(CEDEHCA), with the
support of the other
institutions involved in
the programme, said Olga
Moraga, UNICEF
communications officer
in Managua.
"My daughters learned to
read and write thanks to
the solidarity of
Christian monks, because
the public schools
wouldn't accept them
since they had no birth
certificates," Marcia
Cunninghan, who lives in
Bilwi, the capital of
the RAAN, told IPS. Like
her three daughters, the
36-year-old mother had
no documents either.
The programme has given
tens of thousands of
children and adolescents
an identity and enabled
them to gain access to
health care and
education, recreational
facilities, and civic
participation, and to
have their voices heard
in their communities,
said Argentina Martínez,
acting director of Plan
International Nicaragua.
The registration of
births is also a
fundamental aspect for
prevention of people
trafficking, and
provides the authorities
with precise population
statistics, which allow
them to draw up
developments plans and
design accurate budgets,
she said.
Miriam Hooker, of
CEDEHCA, said that
guaranteeing the right
to a name and
nationality "guarantees
the autonomy of the
indigenous peoples of
the Caribbean coastal
region," because
autonomy is based on
recognition of the
identity of each ethnic
group, which is also
achieved through
registering births.
Indigenous people make
up 8.6 percent of
Nicaragua’s 5.4 million
people, according to the
University of the
Autonomous Regions of
Nicaragua’s Caribbean
Coast.
The Miskito, Mayangna,
Garifuna and Rama ethnic
groups in the Atlantic
coastal region, one of
the poorest parts of the
country, represent 5.3
percent of the
population. The rest of
the country’s indigenous
people are mixed-race
descendants of the Nahua,
Chorotega, Sutiaba and
Matagalpa communities
along the Pacific coast
and in northern and
central Nicaragua.
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