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Little did Aichata Hassan know that after escaping from jihadists threatening his remote village, another great challenge lay ahead. She is to prove to authorities that her 12-year-old daughter, Nadia, exists.
Like countless other children in Niger, Nadia was unable to enroll in secondary school because she did not have a birth certificate.
“Where I am now, we just don’t have the money. Since last year, I’ve been told my daughter can’t go to college without paperwork, and that’s because I don’t have the money.” I can’t,” said Nadia’s mother, Aichata Hassan, who was exiled from her Alzou village.
no legal identity
In some villages there is no official record of births, and the lack of certificates is becoming an increasing problem for displaced families.
Today, an ID is required to enter a school.
According to Idrissa Elias, an educational adviser at Sacoila Schools, “Many kids don’t have birth certificates. You have to go for an exam, and the exam tells you who they are and where they’re from. You can’t send them to the next round unless you have a civil status that identifies them.”
In Niger, where half the population is under the age of 15, 4 out of 10 children are not registered at birth. This is due to the country’s lack of infrastructure, old customs, or simply lack of knowledge of the law.
“They (the population) are not systematically registering their families as soon as a citizenship event occurs. They are still waiting for the need to do so.”
“For example, there was a need to open an account in a bank to benefit from school, law enforcement, other circumstances of life, subsidies, and at this point people realized they needed to obtain citizenship. But they should have done it sooner when it was free,” said Ibrahim Marangoni, head of the National Citizenship Agency for Niger.
Identity documents are a major challenge for Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world.
With the support of the international community, Niger is trying to solve the problem.
Today, 60% of births are registered, yet 4 out of 10 children remain unseen in the state.
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