The Right to Have Rights
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| Adam Himton |
 | Silvino (15), Marciano (13), Nilda (11), Porfiria (9) and Robinson (7) until recently swelled the list of people known as "mau people". Legally they did not exist and were not counted as people with first and last names.
Their parents, Pedro and Severiana, had a hard time gathering the 20,000 guaraníes (about US$4) to pay the one way fare to the Civil Registry Office. The family lives in a very remote community of Paraguay, where all the children were born at home assisted by a midwife. Because of this, the children did not have certificates of live birth so bribes had to be paid to register them.
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| Adam Himton |
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About 70 percent of children in Paraguay face a similar situation and it is estimated that 608,120 children below age 11 are not registered. With such a violation of their right to identity, they have no possibility of exercising other rights. In other words, without the right to have rights.
Plan Paraguay supports a registration campaign for children and adults. Néstor Vera, a Plan Rights Adviser, points out that in Paraguay, 46% of births go unregistered without certificates of live birth. In the case of remote communities, two problems arise: Lack of health services, having to resort to empirical midwives, and the travel cost to get to the Civil Registry offices, which are usually based in capital cities or urban areas.
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| Adam Himton |
| Another factor is unawareness of the requirement to register a newborn baby. A large segment of the population, especially poor and rural, does not believe it is necessary to register their children until they start school or need their personal identification cards.
Besides mass registration campaigns, Plan Paraguay believes that it is essential to lobby the Ministry of Education into facilitating registration at head schools in all districts. This will make the service accessible to citizens as schools are located throughout the country.
See some of the actions made by Plan in the Americas for the Universal birth registration.
Back to the Americas home page
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