Fatshimetrie, 09 August 2024 – A crucial workshop was held this Friday in Fatshimetrie, highlighting the critical importance of strengthening communication to increase civil registration rates in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The stakes are high as the country aims to improve its current birth registration rate, which stands at just 40%, in order to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Massamba Diouf, UNICEF Child Protection and Birth Registration Specialist, highlighted the urgent need to intensify awareness campaigns to encourage families to register their children’s births. He highlighted the remarkable challenges the country faces in this area and stressed the urgency for action.
For his part, Belly Lunanga, Head of Division and National Focal Point for Civil Status, on behalf of the Ministry of the Interior, highlighted the concrete actions needed to support population registration and identification operations. He stressed the crucial importance of the link between civil status registration and the legal identification of individuals, highlighting the fundamental role of the General Population File (FGP) as a single reference for the identification of individuals.
Ms. Chantal Lukadi, legal expert at the National Office for Population Identification (Onip), detailed the interdependence between the civil status system and the FGP, emphasizing that these two entities must work in symbiosis to ensure reliable and consistent identification of the population. She highlighted the importance of civil status data to feed the FGP, emphasizing that this information is crucial to ensure accurate and secure identification of individuals.
The activity, under the theme “Strengthening links between the civil registration system, related statistics and the legal identity system through the digital transformation of the service”, brought together key stakeholders from the Ministries of the Interior, Public Health, the National Institute of Statistics, ONIP, UNICEF, as well as media representatives.
This initiative is part of the African Civil Status Day, celebrated every year on August 10, aimed at raising public awareness of the crucial importance of an effective civil registration system to ensure the identification of all individuals in Africa. It is crucial to make the population visible through efficient and reliable tools, in order to promote development and respect for the fundamental rights of each person. The commitment of all stakeholders is vital to achieve this objective, which is essential for the progress of Congolese society.