Immigration Nationality and Vital Event Agency (INVEA) issued a directive to accelerate the vital events registrations for refugees. Ethiopia also plans to completely finish the civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) in the coming decade.
Mujib Jemal, INVEA Director General, said that the agency issued a directive to ease the registration of vital events for refugees that got green light in the proclamation that was amended in 2017.
“The directive allowed the refugees birth registration with the appearance of mother or father,” he said.
Previously both parents were supposed to appear for the registration, while the directive ease that and allow only one of the parents to appear for registration, according to Mujib.
“In the past it was a barrier for refugee’s birth registration because both parents may not be available or were separated for different reasons,” he said.
Registering of refugees is a good solution to integrate the refugee with the society, according to experts in the sector.
The process will help those that the country hosts to be part of the economic activity in the country and even allow them with some crucial rights in the economy like to have bank account and get driving license.
Mujib said that CRVS is universal and due to that refugees have a right to get all vital registrations.
Even though the country approved the CRVS proclamation, Registration of Vital Events and National Identity Card Proclamation No 760/2012, the country did not fully apply it until 2016 until Ethiopian Vital Events Registration Agency was established.
The country has also a modern ID system as of 2017, while it is not fully applied. Recently Ministry of Peace and International Institute for Information Technology of India signed a deal to introduce modern digital national identification card, which is a pilot program that will run for eight months.
Ethiopia is one of the lowest in birth registration in Africa, with only 3 percent of the births of children under the age of five registered with civil authorities, according to the 2016 Ethiopia demographic and health survey, which was implemented by the Ethiopian Central Statistical Agency.
INVEA Director General told Capital that his agency targeted to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) CRVS target within ten years.
The United Nations SDG target indicated that countries should achieve the death registration by 80 percent and fully cover the birth registration. “We target to comply within the UN timeframe, meanwhile the AU 2063 plan has more relaxed period,” he added.
The agency stated that it is strongly working on awareness creation about CRVS, which is crucial for social and economic development planning and use as an input for different surveys.
