Mozambique

National rate of birth registration 

No official figures are available but it is widely acknowledged that the situation needed to drastically improve

Universal birth rights campaign strategy

Aim of campaign

As a new country, Plan Mozambique began the campaign in November 2007. The objectives are as follows. 

• To register 35,000 children in Jangamo district and Maxixe municipality of Inhambane province by 31 December 2007, in partnership with the Provincial Department of Registration and Notary (DPRN).
• To strengthen the capacity of DPRN, district civil registration offices and community volunteers (children as well) in registration and social mobilisation.
• To improve sustainability by streamlining the structure and process of registration to make it more integrated and connected to the local community structure. 
• To raise awareness among communities, children and teachers about the importance of and need for birth registration. 
  

Strategy 

The campaign was implemented through the DRPN and its district counterpart. The DPRN coordinated and worked in close cooperation with other key government departments, such as education, health, and women and social action. Schools and health posts and health centres played an important role in mobilisation, registration and sustainability of the process. DPRN was responsible for the management of funds, implementation, provision of technical staff, database management, monitoring and reporting. 

Plan Mozambique was responsible for the overall supervision, monitoring, financial accountability, assessment of project performance and donor reporting, and handled project promotion jointly with the DPRN.  Nationally, Plan Mozambique worked closely with the DPRN and UNICEF in sharing information, lessons learned, and advocacy on UBR.    

Expenditure 

The campaign in Mozambique was implemented in the financial year 2008, and the total budget for the two districts was about US$50,000.00 (funded by FLNO), including assessment, reporting and audit. 

Outcomes

Monitoring and ensuring the implementation of policy and legislation related to UBR

The only information available before the project began was that an average of 3,000 people a year were registered in Jangamo – equating to an average of 500 registrations per two-month period. 

From the beginning of the project, the partners carried out systematic and continuous monitoring. Plan Mozambique continuously monitored the process as a whole, and followed up any problems. DPRN presented a fortnightly report to Plan Mozambique on the progress of the project. Plan staff also made monthly field visits to monitor implementation of the project, in addition to DPRN's weekly supervision of the registration posts to be aware of problems and help solve them.

Plan monitoring activities included: 

• observing the training of registration agents
• financial monitoring to ensure that funds were available on time and used as planned   
• registration process monitoring, to check that the agents had the necessary and timely support and to help ensure that targets were met. 

At the end of the first two-month phase, there was an assessment workshop involving the implementation partners - including members of the registration brigades, social mobilisation agents, DPRN staff involved in the supervision visits, and Plan staff who had followed up the process. The main finding from this workshop was that the project almost reached its target, registering 34,944 children of the 35,000 planned - 99.84% of the target. Thanks to the continuous monitoring to the project, problems in the field were identified and solved on a timely basis.

This project complemented, rather than duplicated, other activities of the DPRN. There were no other similar projects in the targeted communities, and the normal civil registration offices worked as usual, without interference from Plan's campaign.

Partnerships, coordination, cooperation, alliances and coalitions

The partnerships involved were government and community organisations. The government was funded by Plan International to implement the birth registration project in Jangamo and Maxixe by training the mobile brigades.

The DPRN considered that Plan Mozambique's assistance helped to fill the usual gaps of lack of space and material and financial resources, and was a good way to mobilise people on the importance of registration for their children.  As the DPRN implements other similar projects, the registration agents trained for this campaign can also help sustain future initiatives.  

Plan Mozambique built its capacity through the experience and knowledge gained in this project, and this can be used in similar projects in other parts of the country.

The campaign also gave social mobilisation agents some experience in organising and advocacy, and the registration agents developed their experience, which they can also use to enhance their careers.

Involving children in the UBR campaign 

After getting a registration certificate, a child can have the right to education, is accounted for in programmes to improve the quality of education, and is included in programmes to reduce poverty. Children also helped mobilise their parents to take them to the registration posts. This can change the culture of their parents and of society in the future, as these children become fathers and mothers. In many registration posts, the members of the brigades gave priority to orphans and vulnerable children and people with disabilities. Children from different social groups had the same opportunities.

Good practice

The involvement of community leaders in community mobilisation meant that many lessons were learned. 

• The need to make birth registration a sustainable process. 
• The importance of communication to hear what problems communities face, and the need to respect their thoughts and beliefs to ensure their cooperation.
• Gender was an important factor in social development in the districts of our projects.
• The registration offices in the districts need to follow up constantly to help solve day-to-day problems. 
• Many members of the registration brigades learned that birth registration is important, as it was something that most had never thought about before.

For Plan, that campaign was a great opportunity to prove the importance of participation in problem solving. We will use the experience from this exercise for the next one, and in other parts of the country.

Challenges, gaps and barriers

• Lack of resources is hampering government from providing effective registration services nationwide.
• Registration services or structures are non-existent below the district level.
• The low awareness of the population.   

National level recommendations 

Making birth registration a priority and generating commitment at the national level is a challenge. Plan is in dialogue with National Department of Registration and UNICEF, and hopes that a future coherent and expanded programme will emerge.

Future activities 

Plan Mozambique has generated US$100,000 additional funding, and is discussing a new project with the national and provincial registration authorities. This project will help to pilot a birth registration database in Inhambane province, and also establish sub-district registration centres in Jangamo district to enhance sustainability. This project will demonstrate a sustainable and cooperative approach that has a potential to be replicated in other parts of the country. 

Case study

According to Cacilda Ezequiel Macamo, aged 45 - who was trying to register herself as a means to register her children - many people were not registered for many reasons. These included long distances to the registration centres, lack of financial resources to get a registration, and other problems related to the country's poverty. That also affects the government, which lacks space to organise the registration processes, staff with the adequate skills and material resources. Some customs, such as the birth ceremony, also delay the naming and registering of children.

The effects of non-registration include the inability of having other rights respected. For instance, it is a pre-requisite for the right to a school place.

To tackle this issue, Plan Mozambique decided to implement a two-month free registration project, in a partnership with the Provincial Directorate of Registration and Notary of Inhambane, to register 15,000 children in Jangamo district and 20,000 children in Maxixe village. Thanks to the financial resources for the training of 10 mobile registration brigades (five in each district), and their wages and materials, as well as the community leaders who helped in social mobilisation, at the end of the first month, more than half the children in each district – 22,223 children -  had been registered. 

Most people felt that the project had come at the right time.  Delfina Cuamba, a 28-year-old woman of Marrumuana village in Jangamo district, had three children to register, but this had been difficult due to lack of money and the distance to the birth registration department in Jangamo district.  

“I know that it is important to get a birth registration for all the children because they have a right to an identity. For my children it was quite difficult to get the documentation due to the lack of money.” 

Delfina emphasised that projects like this should be encouraged and empowered to support communities: 

“The birth registration campaigns are very good, because they give the children the opportunity to have a document for their future life. Without the project, I would not have had enough money to pay the transport to the Jangamo village where the birth registration department is located and to pay the registration itself.

“Thank you for your support, I hope you will be always with us. Nyi Bonguile [thank you].”