The right to nationality

UNHCR will continue with its efforts to reach more populations at risk of statelessness.

A total of 1,377 Sama Bajau and unregistered children in the context of forced displacement due to armed conflict and their families in four far-flung municipalities in Maguindanao, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi received their birth certificates in 2023.

The 2020 Census of Population and Housing released by Philippine Statistics Authority stated that Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao posted the lowest proportion of persons with registered births at 77 of the household population which corresponds to reportedly 1.10 million persons whose births were unregistered.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and Unicef have been supporting BARMM through its Ministry of Social Services and Development to register births in the region.

Implemented under the UNHCRUnicef Joint Strategy for Addressing Childhood Statelessness and in line with the Philippine government’s implementation of its National Action Plan to End Statelessness since 2019, the initiative has helped more than 4,000 individuals in areas that experience recurring conflict and cyclical displacement receive their birth certificates.

“Having a birth certificate facilitates the processes toward gaining nationality, which is a fundamental right of every human being. UNHCR is grateful for the continued cooperation of all our partners in the IBelong Campaign efforts,” said UNHCR Philippines head of national office Maria Ermina Valdeavilla-Gallardo.

“In addition to giving children their right to a name and a nationality, birth certificates protect children from being trafficked, recruited into conflict, forced in child labor, and being separated from their families. Governments also rely on accurate data on children for better planning and allocation of resources,” said Unicef Philippines representative Oyunsaikhan Dendevnorov.

Aside from providing support during the conduct of actual birth registration, local government units also received equipment for digitization of the processes at the local civil registrar’s level, as well as birth registration advocacy campaign materials led by the Bangsamoro Youth Commission and selected youth networks that highlight the importance of birth registration.

“Our local civil registrars have received training, and the municipality has also been given equipment to digitize the processing of birth certificates. These documents are critical for availing social services from different agencies,” said minister Raissa Jajurie of the BARMM Ministry of Social Services and Development.

By providing capacity-building support through training and equipment, and offering birth registration free of charge, populations that have been identified to be at risk of statelessness such as the Sama Bajau and unregistered children in the context of displacement due to armed conflict can now easily register and get their birth certificates.

This gives them a legal identity and eases their access to education, livelihood, health care and other social services.

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF UNICEF BY bringing the birth-registration initiative to more communities and digitizing local civil registrars, eventually birth certificates will no longer be out of reach to distant municipalities in the Bangsamoro.