The Burkina Faso Ethics Committee approves the BRAVO! research on civil registration in Sanguié Province

Registration immediately after birth is essential to ensure childrens' rights from the start, yet in Burkina Faso and in most low-income countries almost all registrations occur with late procedures, sometimes even many years after birth.
Sant'Egidio, through the BRAVO program! is carrying out a pilot intervention in the Sanguié province of the Center-Ouest region so that all children can be registered as soon as they are born.
In the municipalities of Réo and Godyr, civil status offices have been opened in all health centers, to allow immediate registration to all children born or vaccinated there.
The Ethics Committee authorised a research on the evaluation of the impact of this action. It will thus be possible to study the effectiveness of the action and evaluate the improvements to be made for its extension to wider areas.

Read more:
Study Protocol (French)
Ethics committee approval (French)

Mozambique: BRAVO! starts also in the maternity wards of Matola and Manga Chingussura

BRAVO! activists in  Manga Chingussura

Sensitization in Matola

BRAVO! extends the work of sensitization and the registration of new born in two more provinces of the Country: Maputo and Sofala. The collaboration with the maternity ward of the city of Nampula, active since 2014, has shown how the collaboration between Health and Civil Status is crucial. Almost all the children of the area pass in the hospitals and the Health Centers,   some coming for the childbirth, some for the postnatal visit, some other for vaccinations and else. In recent months the BRAVO! Program met thousands of mothers, making them aware of the importance to register children immediately after the birth and informing them about the procedures to obtain the birth certificate for their children.

Sensitization in Manga Chingussura

Now BRAVO! began the work to raise awareness of families and registration of newborns in two important Health Centers near Maputo, in Matola, and in a suburb of Beira, in Manga Chingussura. These two new maternity wards serve heavily populated neighborhoods and are daily visited by more than a thousand mothers with their children. This will make easier and clearer to register the children and obtain the birth certificate.

Training of BRAVO! activists

In January BRAVO! created two new groups of activists dedicated to the sensitization and registration in the two maternities. The activists received an intensive training on the benefits arising  from the possession of the birth certificate and problems that can result for a child without it, on administrative procedures for the civil registration, on the preservation of the documents and the computerization of the data, on strengthening of the communication and disclosure skills

Training of BRAVO! activists

The activists will be able to answer as effectively and clearly as possible to all the questions of the people they meet in the maternity wards and they will help them to complete the procedures of the newborns registration.

Birth registration in Manga Chingussura

The BRAVO! activities in the two new maternity wards started immediately after the training, and the activists have already met many mothers. The beginning of the activities in the two maternity wards has been received very positively  by the hospitals, which are already experiencing an intense collaboration with the DREAM program of the Community of Sant’Egidio for the fighting against AIDS.

All the above has been made possible thanks to the funding from the Minister of Economic and Development Cooperation (BMZ) and the collaboration of Kindermissionswerk.

Sensitization in Manga Chingussura

Sensitization in Manga Chingussura

Sensitization in Manga Chingussura

Burkina Faso: BRAVO! register 11.000 people in 2014

In May 2014, the Government of Burkina Faso declared eight months free of charge for late registration (those that take place over 60 days from birth). BRAVO! Program is committed for a long time in support of rural municipalities in the Country, thanks to the financial support provided by Kindermissionswerk and some Italian local authorities.

During the extraordinary free campaign of registration, launched by the Government on May 8, BRAVO! helped the Government to give birth certificates to 11.000 people living in the Province of Sanguié, where more than 300.000 people are living. BRAVO! organized more than 200 Public Hearings (Audience Foraines) in all the villages. The registration teams reached the rural areas of the country where the registration rate is lower, due to the great distance from the civil status office. The BRAVO! method implemented in collaboration with the local authorities is very effective to overcome the difficulties that people meet to get the birth certificate. There are zones particularly disadvantaged and under-served not only in rural areas but also in urban areas, where low birth registration rate are noted. The opening  of registration offices nearer to the places where people live gave a fundamental contribution to a lot of registration. The campaign also highlighted the high rate of illiteracy among those who had no birth certificate.

The main beneficiaries of the registration campaign in Sanguié were minors, about 40% of total registered. The birth certificate allows children to attend school and is a necessary condition to take exams and access to the High School.

The campaign data show a high percentage of women compared to men, and this shows how, thanks to the BRAVO! Work, a significant number of mothers had the opportunity to register themselves.

Burkina Faso has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world, having 75% of the population who can’t read nor write. Just to encourage school attendance, BRAVO! will continue its work not only with moving teams, but will also start the registration campaign in the primary schools, which in the Sanguié Province are 250.

Signed the Cooperation agreement between the Government of Malawi and the Community of Sant'Egidio to implement BRAVO! in the Country

On December 5^th, in Lilongwe, the Interior Minister of Malawi and the Community of Sant’Egidio signed the memorandum of Understanding for the implementation of the BRAVO! Program in Malawi during an official ceremony attended by many officials, members of the National Registration Bureau and Malawian representatives of the Community of Sant’Egidio.

The registration of births, marriages and deaths in Malawi is compulsory by the National Registration Act of 2010. Now the Government wants to implement it with the support of stakeholders working for the promotion of fundamental rights, and in particular the rights of children.

It is estimated that only 10% of the population hold the birth certificate. This agreement is therefore an important step forward for Malawi. For the newly elected President, Peter Mutarika, the civil registration is a priority, and he put it  among the programmatic points of the presidency during the assignment speech.

Since many years the Community of Sant’Egidio included the birth registration among the actions for the protection of thousands of children, that are helped through the DREAM Program, the School of Peace, the distance adoptions throughout Malawi, to ensure to all the legal identity and to defend them from human trafficking, child labour, early marriage and all form of exploitation.

The BRAVO! Program will support the registration of the whole population of Malawi, starting from the rural district of Balaka. The Program has shown in recent years, in Burkina Faso and Mozambique, to have developed an effective strategy to reach people living in villages. Indeed, BRAVO! is considered a best practice at continental level also for being able to deal successfully with one of the most problematic issue of the African states: the registration of the population living in rural areas.

South Africa Statistics and BRAVO!: Civil registration experiences

BRAVO! and South Africa Statistics

On invitation of the South Africa Statistics (SSA), a delegation of the BRAVO! Programme visited South Africa from 15 to 17 September 2014. The invitation comes after the 9^th Africa Symposia on Statistical Development, where BRAVO! representatives presented their experience about their work. BRAVO! has been recognized as a best practice inside the Africa Programme on Accelerated Improvement of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (APAI-CRVS) of the Economic Commission for Africa of the United Nations (UNECA)  having achieved excellent results in the improvement of the birth registrations in Mozambique and Burkina Faso.

The presentation of BRAVO!
to the South Africa Statistics representatives

The visit has been the opportunity for the South Africa Statistics to present all the aspects of the operation of civil registration in South Africa: from modernization of identification process to the crucial role of health, from the production of the statistics to the registration through mobile devices, as well as the operation of the processes concerning registration of marriages and divorces, adoptions and deaths.

Visit to the Statistics Data Center
of the South Africa Statistics

The delegation was also invited to visit the Statistics Data Center of the country, the civil registration offices and the maternity where the South African population can register their children.

Visit to a Maternity where children can be registered

The official visit ended with a meeting with the Deputy General Director of the South Africa Statistics, Dr. Risenga Maluleke, who expressed great appreciation for the BRAVO! Programme.

The meeting also opened new perspectives of collaboration.

The South Africa Statistics newsletter of the Institute of Statistics shows the results of the visit, especially the importance of collaboration between South Africa and Mozambique, and the ability to reproduce the method used by the BRAVO! Programme in rural areas for the civil registration.

Click here to download the newsletter (page 8)

Rwanda Adopts Web-Based Application for Civil Registration

The government of Rwanda has launched online registration for newborns, deaths, marriages and divorces, as a way of consolidating the country's statistics and coming up with timely and accurate figures.

The pilot project of the web-based application... read more

Click here for another article on this news

Sanguie, Burkina Faso: materials for civil registration have been delivered by Sant'Egidio

The commitment of Bravo! The program for birth registration of the Community of Sant'Egidio for the strengthening of civil status in Burkina Faso.

At the end of the national campaign that has seen about three and a half million new registered people, of whom 62% children, the program continues towards the stabilization of the registration system in the entire national territory.

This new phase was inaugurated by the delivery in rural municipalities in the province of Sanguié of cabinets, office furniture and the materials required for the registration: stationery, blank forms and recording tools donated to the registration offices to facilitate the work and the preservation of documents. 

Delivery of documents for registration in Dydir Municipality

Some state offices, which had been damaged in the riots of 2010 (or that were damaged for other reasons) were also repaired and thus fully operational. This donation was possible thanks to the support of the municipalities of Pavia, Bosco Marengo (AL), Andora (Sv), and the province of Pavia.

WHAT IS BRAVO!? The Community of Sant'Egidio has given life to the program BRAVO! (Birth registration versus oblivion) for birth registration of children to respond to the growing challenge of many unregistered children and .... read more