Four out of ten children are not registered at birth in the civil registry in Niger. Nadia Salou, 12, is one of them. Like her sister Zeneba, 9, and little Abdoulkarim, 4, she only exists by her first name. His mother Aïchata Hassan gave birth at home and no state agent was present. Originally from the small rural village of Alzou in a remote area of ??the Tillabéri region (west), the young woman had sixty days to go and declare her children. But her low income, distance from the city and transportation costs deterred her.
For five years, jihadist incursions have multiplied in the region known as the three borders between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. In Alzou, they came several times on motorbikes. First to seize cattle. Then the village chief was killed. It was then that Aïchata Hassan and her children decided to flee: they walked to the neighboring commune, Sakoira, about thirty kilometers away. Nadia, Zeneba and Abdoulkarim were enrolled in school there. Life has resumed its course in this small town on the tarmac between Tillabéri and Ayorou.
But when registering Nadia for the 6th grade entrance exam, Aïchata became disillusioned: without a birth certificate, no competition possible. “Many school children are in this situation”, regrets the educational adviser Idrissa Illiassou, thirty years in rural education on the clock. “Young people without a birth certificate, it will give adults without identity papers, they will be excluded,” he laments.
Civil registration is a huge challenge for Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world. “We have a paper-based culture, but it’s outdated, you have to use computers,” said Ibrahim Malangoni, the national director of civil status. With strong support from the international community, Niger is trying to reverse the trend. Organization of mobile hearings, awareness-raising operations, computerization of the sector, campaigns with NGOs… “We want to maximize operations to meet the objective of the entire registered population by 2030,” he explains.
“Paper Culture”
Today, the rate of timely registration of children at birth is 60%. But it’s already “a remarkable rate because not so long ago, in 2007, we were barely at 30%,” according to Malangoni. The people, “especially in the bush villages”, he says, “are not yet in the logic of systematizing registration, they are still waiting for the need”.
However, these needs are legion: to enroll a child in school, to access justice, to benefit from a scholarship, to open a bank account, to vote, or simply to pass a police check, a card ID is requested. “With a minor investment (from the state and international donors), you can provide these boys and girls in the world’s youngest country with hope,” says Jan Egeland, secretary general of the NGO Norwegian Refugee. Council (NRC), very involved in these issues of access to civil status.
Katoumi Youssou, sitting on a mat in the shade of a tree a few meters away, only has her voice to curse. This onion producer from Sakoira has never had any papers: “We women, we travel little and in the village, we don’t need that! But the arrival of the war has turned his life upside down, army checkpoints have multiplied in recent years, and, without papers, their passage has become hell. To go sell your onions in town, to go to a wedding, “every time I have to pay the soldiers to let me pass”.
Like Aïchata Hassan, the farmer is waiting for the next visit of a judge in a mobile court to be regularized. However, she does not accept that her identity be questioned: “I have no document, but I am still from Niger, no one can tell me otherwise! “And to add with a smile:” Only, it’s true, my “Nigerianness” is perhaps incomplete. »
