Gudigwa, BOTSWANA: August 10th every year is celebrated as Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Day. The day is set aside to increase public awareness of the importance of the timely registration of vital events, particularly births and deaths, through well-functioning civil registration and vital statistics systems.

It was against this background that the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs, with support from UNFPA, joined other African countries on Thursday, August 10, 2023, to commemorate this year’s Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Day in the country under the theme Birth Certificate for All: Fundamental for Protecting Rights and Promoting Inclusion. This event was held in Gudigwa, a remote settlement in the eastern Okavango panhandle, to ensure those furthest left behind were reached.

In his keynote address, the Assistant Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Honourable Mabuse Pule, indicated that civil registration provides individuals with the documentary evidence required to secure recognition of their legal identity and nationality heritage. He also added that it accords individuals opportunities that safeguard their rights, such as the right to social protection and inheritance.

"This documentation helps to facilitate access to essential services such as health, education, and social welfare, and it can also contribute to benefits such as gaining formal employment, exercising electoral rights, transferring property, and enable citizens to have improved access to social security systems that secure protection aimed at preventing or alleviating poverty. In this regard, a lack of civil registration during crises or natural disasters can lead to statelessness," he added.

In his conclusion, the Assistant Minister expressed his heartfelt appreciation and gratitude to UNFPA for their support in the mass registration campaign, ensuring that the civil and vital events in Botswana continue to evolve and flourish in tandem with peers in Africa and in the global arena.

As a buildup to the day, UNFPA Botswana supported the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs’s Department of Civil and National Registration to conduct a public awareness and mass registration campaign, targeting the hard-to-reach areas. These covered seven villages: Maun, Gumare, Shakawe, Seronga, Gunotsoga, Beetsha, and Gudigwa. Services offered included new Omang applications and renewals, late registration of birth and death certificates, collection of birth and death certificates, and collection of Omang. Community outreach campaigns remain a key component of a robust CRVS system. Without this engagement, policies designed to improve the lives of entire populations could go unused due to a lack of knowledge or mistrust of the system.

For her part, the UNFPA Head of Office, Ms. Tlangelani Shilubane-Pietersen, said the agency recognizes and values a well-functioning CRVS ecosystem and its potential as a regular and consistent source of data. She highlighted that in this last half of implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda, there is heightened demand for such granular-level data and noted that while the government of Botswana may invest in strengthening and availing a well-functioning system, among other factors, its resourcefulness is tied to the end users, being residents of this country, and their consumption of the registration services. She therefore urged that considerations be made to improve the system and its reach and that the voices of the users be heard and taken into consideration.

"For this reason, UNFPA has committed to assisting the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs in strengthening the CRVS ecosystem and ensuring that end users are involved in the process." You may recall that in March of this year, we embarked on a statewide tour with the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs to conduct intensive stakeholder engagements. And I've been told that these consultations reached Gudigwa. All of this was done to inform the planned development of a people-centered successor CRVS Investment Strategic Plan," she continued.

Ms. Shilubane-Pietersen said that the implications of inadequate vital statistics cannot be overstated, adding that for women, the lack of such statistics increases their vulnerability to gender-based violence, such as domestic abuse, property dispossession, sexual violence, and limited child custody rights. Similarly, insufficient vital data make proper age assessments difficult for young girls, compounding concerns such as child marriage, adolescent pregnancies, and other forms of child abuse.

She concluded by reaffirming UNFPA’s unwavering commitment to continue supporting the Government of Botswana to speed up the process of change towards a modern and progressive CRVS system in which data, including vital statistics, will be shared and used for the formulation and implementation of evidence-based policies and decision-making.

"It is a must that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) be achieved across the world during the next seven years, and in order to make the necessary progress, data from the CRVS systems must be reliable and up-to-date," she concluded.

The event ended with mass registration for all vital events and the touring of stalls. Over 500 people were registered.

UNFPA Support

UNFPA is one of the world’s largest supporters of population data collection. In addition to supporting censuses and surveys, UNFPA works with policymakers, civil society, healthcare providers, and educators at all levels to promote sexual and reproductive health and rights, including voluntary family planning.

UNFPA also offers a wide range of programming to help countries build demographic resilience, or their capacity to address population dynamics in a holistic manner, mitigating negative effects and harnessing the opportunities that come with demographic change.