Cameroon

Politicized birth registration practices as part of conflict / contests over territory

In Cameroon several conflicts are happening concurrently, escalating with the Anglophone Crisis in 2016. This affects birth registration for children born to refugees in the North and children born in the contested area of the Bakassi Peninsula. In the Far North, and in the Anglophone regions of the Northwest and Southwest engaged in a separatist conflict, government officials said that four out of every ten children lack a birth certificate.

Promising Practices

In 2020 the Cameroonian Minister of Decentralization and Local Development declared intent to target birth registration efforts for 500,000 children in conflict zones. In 2023, the pilot phase of Cameroon’s project to issue birth certificates to children lacking identity documents commenced. 100 birth certificates were symbolically issued in Batouri to launch the project.