Ghana commits to full registration

Plan has been working in partnership with the Ghanaian government to achieve full registration for all children by 2010. Despite being the first country in Africa to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, more than a decade later only 28 per cent of children were registered in the country (based on 2003 figures).

Plan Ghana’s collaboration with the Birth and Death Registry in Ghana led to: the declaration of the first "births and deaths registration day" in Ghana; an increase in the number of children registered from 28 per cent to 49 per cent, barely a year after efforts on birth registration began; and free registration for all children between birth and 12 months.

Ghana has aimed to increase birth registration to 95 per cent by the end of 2010.
Kingsley Asare of the Births and Deaths Department said: "With the assistance of Plan Ghana, hopes are high in finding ways and measures of attaining a hundred per cent birth registration coverage in Ghana by the end of the campaign period."