EDITORIAL

Non-entities

Before the government gets serious about the national identification system, it should first make sure all citizens are duly registered at birth. As the Philippines joined the world yesterday in launching the Universal Birth Registration campaign, the National Statistics Office reported that as many as 5.3 million Filipinos, 2.6 million of them children, did not have birth certificates. This is based on the last nationwide census conducted by the NSO in 2000, and those figures are sure to have risen in the past four years. Health workers and human rights advocates are concerned that people whose births are not officially registered are virtual non-entities, unable to avail themselves of basic services such as free education and health care. Lacking formal education and official records of their existence, they are unable to get decent jobs and contribute to nation-building when they become adults. The figures should also worry proponents of the national ID system. Proponents want the ID cards particularly for people who have not obtained other official identification documents such as social security and medical care cards, taxpayer ID, driver’s license and passport. But how do you go after people whose births are not even registered? These people have no official birth date, citizenship or even legal name. The figures given by the NSO places the number of adults lacking birth certificates at 2.7 million. That’s a lot of people to account for with accuracy under the national ID system.

The problem is not unique to the Philippines. The United Nations estimates that there are 48 million children worldwide whose births have not been registered. Often these children are the most vulnerable to human trafficking and conscription as child soldiers. In the Philippines, lack of awareness or misconceptions about birth registration have kept millions of people from getting births officially recorded. Local governments, which are directly in charge of the delivery of most basic services, must lead the campaign to encourage birth registration. Since local executives are also supporting the national ID system, they must first make sure that whatever personal information they get from their constituents will be accurate. That accurate information starts at birth.

24 February 2005
http://www.philstar.com/philstar/News200502242601.htm

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