Advocating for Universal Birth Registration in Togo

In the absence of updated population data, Plan Togo conducted a workshop in May 2005 with the support of 63 local researchers to help reveal the causes of lack of birth registration. The researchers teamed up with local Universal Birth Registration committees (comprising children, adults, birth attendants and civil servants in charge of Universal Birth Registration) to support the exercise.

Mobilised by the committees, children, men and women participated in lively discussions on why people don’t register their children and what the consequences are : parents do not register their children because it costs money and live too far from the closest town hall. When registering their children, some people are told to come back 3 days later to get the birth certificate ready, which is discouraging when they live 10 kilometres afar.

Not giving their children a birth certificate, early school drop out and child trafficking are linked.

Children who cannot give proof of their age as they don't have a birth certificate get easily

• engaged in labour activities beyond their age
• they can be cheated on their age and name by the trafficker and therefore easily cross the border to another country with strangers as they cannot prove their nationality nor their family relationship with the person accompanying them. Once the children return they cannot prove their nationality are often rejected at the border.

100% registration rates

The workshop resulted in the development of local action plans to achieve 100% registration rates at village level; The Workshop was also a success where Plan worked in Togo earlier on this year.
 
The exercise revealed that over 70% of all children in East Mono now had a birth certificate compared to over 70% who had not when the first baseline was done. This success was fully attributed to Plan’s continuous efforts to promote Universal Birth Registration.