• Highlight the importance of establishing  the political commitment to achieve the universal free and on time birth registration of all children of the Caribbean by the year 2015.
• To reach a consensus to establish a foundation for a Regional Action Plan led by the CARICOM and a firm commitment with each country for the elaboration of national action plans that establish specific goals, priorities, detailed timetables, and assign responsibilities for this purpose.
• To share innovative experiences and best practices to strengthen horizontal cooperation among countries and alliances destined to achieve universal, free and on time birth registration for all the children in the Caribbean, with special emphasis on excluded populations.
• To inform and bring awareness among public opinion in the Caribbean regarding the right to an identity and universal birth registration.

This was released at a press conference by the Director of the DIF System for Altimira, Minerva Ayala García, accompanied by the head of the municipal Civil Registry, María del Rosario Alba Rangel, and by Salvador Moreno Ortiz, Coordinator of the Legal Department of the organization.

The requisites for filing the paperwork are; to be Mexican, older than 60 years, two witnesses qualified as voters, proof of residence, marriage certificate if you are married, birth certificate of siblings and children if you have them, all originals and three copies.

It was mentioned that “although we may not believe it, in actuality there are many adult individuals in the state that do not possess birth certificates. While these numbers are decreasing due to the numerous campaigns that have been carried out, they continue to exist, as some have changed cities, or they lost the documents and don’t know how to fill out the necessary documents.”

The campaign is the entire month of August, with a deadline of the 27th to hand in documents in the offices of the DIF System of Altimira in the legal department, as well as in the offices of the Civil Registry. Likewise, it was said, that it will be possible to process without cost the proof of residence managed by the town hall, with the objective that more grandparents be able to acquire this document.

Likewise, it was indicated that “this year we are not even going to reach 100 certificates, because each time the number of senior citizens that come to file the documents have been less, now that almost all possess it. But, I leave clear, that if someone participates in the campaigns conducted by the DIF System in Altamira, it is them, the seniors.”

Fuente: http://laverdad.com.mx/desplegar_noticia.php?seccion=REGIONAL&nota=50700

The project has as its goal to guarantee the right to identity to 780,000 Paraguayans living in the 9 departments of the country with the highest incidence of unregistered individuals such as Concepción, San Pedro, Itapúa, Canindeyú, Alto Paraná, Alto Paraguay, Pte Hayes, Central and Caaguazú.

During the presentation of this initiative, the Minister of Justice and Labor, Humberto Blasco, said that this program is targeted towards fighting poverty from the dimension that departs from the recognition of the person as a subject of law. “This entity is constituted on one of the strategic principles of the fight against poverty, because from the identification of individuals, citizens find the key to access their social, political, and economic rights, and without this recognition they are deprived of these guarantees”, Blasco pointed out.

The head of the MJT underlined that this project will signify a strengthening of government services in the favor of the most vulnerable sectors and that with it they would attempt to eliminate the under-registration of births. “This signifies the removal of the invisibility and the poverty of many compatriots that, because of their social and economic condition, they find themselves deprived of one of the most fundamental human rights, which is that of identity”, he expressed while celebrating the cooperation in the venture with international organizations such as the OAS and the IDB, as well as the support of Itaipú Binational.

For his part, the Director of the Program for Universal Civil Identity in the Americas (PUICA), Félix Ortega, indicated that one of the lines of action of the OAS is the protection of Human Rights, and that in this sense it gives support to the organization for the amplification of services in favor of the populations with the greatest incidence of undocumented individuals, with the goal that all citizens be objects of law and be able to form part of government social programs. Likewise, he expressed his satisfaction with the advance that the Civil Registry has had with respect to the Digitalization of Birth Certificates.

The General Director of the Social Cabinet of the Presidency, Jorge Talavera, remarked that with this action of the MJT they sought to expand the presence of the State across the national territory. “Because this government is committed to finding solutions to social problems, we seek to accelerate a social policy that focuses on human rights”, he affirmed.

The right to identity is fundamental for the integral development of a complete human being, because from this process one can individualize themselves as an integral member of society and subject of justice. The program raises a joint territorial intervention between the institutions responsible for the management of identity documents for the citizens of the country, the Ministry of Justice and Labor through the Registry of the Civil State and the Ministry of the Interior, through the Department of Identifications.

During the process, the MJT was made aware of data concerning the process of Digitalization and computerization of Proceedings, learning that up to that point they had achieved the digitalization of 1,524,200 birth certificates and the computerization of 7,372,095 birth certificates, as well as 1,166,764 death certificates. Likewise, thus far they have computerized 393,400 marriage certificates.

Regarding the results of the Massive Registration Campaign, which the MJT has been carrying out in different parts of the country, it was mentioned that they have had 7,168 first time registrations, provided 14,336 birth certificates as well as providing other services such as the renewal of computerized certificates amounting to 17,572, the manual renewal of 5,420 certificates, 33,884 copies of the proceedings, 33,923 given identity documents for the first time, 12,883 documents renewed, and 5,926 indigenous licenses.

In addition to the Minister Humberto Blasco, the representative of the OAS, Félix Ortega, and the General Director of the Social Cabinet, Jorge Talavera, many other representatives participated in the event, including the Minister-Secretary of the Technical Secretariat of Planning, Bernardo Esquivel; the Director of the Civil Registry, Stelatto Mojoli and the Director of the Department of Identification of the National Police, Crio. Eliseo Baéz.

Fuente: http://www.ipparaguay.com.py/index.php?id=cmp-noticias&n=22705

On Thursday, April 29th, in the Secretariat of Governance of Mexico, the International Symposium of Methodologies for the Measurement of Under-registration of Births commenced. The inaugural ceremony of the meeting, organized by the OAS and SEGOB/RENAPO, enjoyed the presence of the Subsecretary of Population, Migration, and Religious Affairs of the Secretariat of Governance, Dr. Alejandro Alfonso Poiré Romero, the representative of the OAS in Mexico Ambassador Oscar Maurtua de Romaña, and Director General Lic. Carlos Raul Anaya Moreno of the National Registry of Population and Personal Identification.

The objective of the symposium was to identify and analyze distinct experiences and methodologies for the measurement of under-registration of births, their location and the variables that compose it. To this end, the organizers of the workshop invited civil registry directors from the 31 Mexican States, as well as international institutions such as UNICEF, UNFPA, and Plan International among others. The symposium also included the participation of officials from the Civil Registry and statistical institutions from Ecuador, Panama and Peru.

Over the course of 2 days, diverse presentations contributed to an enriched discussion respecting the importance of calculating under-registration of births in order to be able to combat it effectively. Likewise, the different methodologies and best practices implemented as a result of this effort were shared in order to be replicated between countries.

AGENDA and PRESENTATIONS:

PANEL 1: The Problem of Under-registration of Births in Latin America and the Caribbean

-Consequences of under-registration of births in Latin America –Dra. Débora Cobar, Director of Plan Guatemala.Presentation (Spanish) – Dra. Débora Cobar

-The importance of the civil registry for vital statistics – Lic. Héctor Ramea, National Director of the Civil Registry of Panamá.

-The Right to Identity and the registry of births from the view of infancy. Dra. Susana Sottoli. Representative of UNICEF in México

PANEL 2: Variables that factor in the measurement of under-registration

-Sources of information and under-registration of population groups – Dra. Cristina Gómez, Regional Advisor of Population and Development. UNFPA. Presentation (Spanish) – Dra. Cristina Gómez

-The calculus of under-registration in populations in Mexico – Mtro. Juan Enrique García López, Director of Demographic Analysis, Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI) Presentation (Spanish) – Mtro. Juan Enrique García López

PANEL 3: Tools and Challenges in the Measurement of Under-registration

-The use of censuses and surveys for the measurement of under-registration
a) Lic. Jessica Menéndez, Directora del Litoral Guayaquil del Instituto Nacional de Estadística de Ecuador.
b) Ing. Paulo Rodríguez, Director General de Registro Civil, Identificación y Cedulación del Ecuador

-Elements for the diagnosis of under-registration – Dr. Dwight Ordoñez, International Consultant Presentation – Dr. Dwight Ordoñez

PANEL 4: Experiences in the measurement of under-registration in Latin America and the Caribbean

-Methodologies for the measurement of under-registration: experiences and opportunities – Mtro. Mariano Cucho, Subjefe del Registro Nacional del Estado Civil de Perú.

-The Civil Registry and vital statistics: a vital input for the development of Latin America – Dr. Fernando Neira Orjuela, Investigador del Centro de Investigaciones sobre América Latina y el Caribe de la UNAM Presentation (Spanish) – Dr. Fernando Neira Orjuela

-Socio-juridical approximation for the study of under-registration in Mexico – Dr. Mauricio Padrón Inamorato y Dra. Mónica González Contró, Investigadores del Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas de la UNAM Presentation (Spanish) – Dra. Mónica González Contró – Dr. Mauricio Padrón Inamorato

In accordance with the planning of the Civil Registry, the debugging of its database will culminate in December of 2013. One of the principal actions to achieve this objective is that the Ecuadoreans that are in the electoral ledger (10,532,005 in 2009) have the new ID in hand by 2012.

The new document, which has 16 security measures that make it almost inviolable, will be a crucial crutch to debug the Ecuadorean identification database. This is due to the fact that the technological process to obtain the new ID collects the signature and fingerprints in a species of scanners that feed into the digital database.

Roberto Toledo, the technological coordinator of the Civil Registry, confirms this. These characteristics of the citizen, more than a digital photograph, are now compared electronically and recorded in the document’s security chip.

These security measures avoid that one person have two IDs, that their information be altered, or that they attempt to obtain a new document. On par with this procedure, the identification entity created a Specialized Unit to correct the errors and anomalies that exist in the database.

Increasing Personnel

In actuality, seven technicians from the Civil Registry review the index cards (where the schedular data is located), birth certificates, death certificicates, marriage certificates, and IDs with erroneous names and numbers. In preparation for the debugging of the database, this Unit will increase its personnel in order to have 40 people responsible for this task.

Some of them will be personnel of the fingerprint archive of the National Archive of the Civil Registry, which operates in Turubamba, to the south of Quito. They will be fundamental respective to the reading of fingerprints.

The debugging process is based in juridical, administrative, physical and automatic processes in which modifications of the citizen data are determined and endorsed. That is to say, only by overcoming these processes can the citizen modify or correct any errors.

There are errors of first and last names, homonyms, etc., that are being studied. If an identity claim of a given entity is valid, the documentation will be issued.

The director of the Civil Registry, Paulo Rodríguez, points out that the database will be debugged by 2013. The fingerprint review, conducted electronically, will be one part of this undertaking.

“The digital reading of the ten fingerprints, simultaneously, is conducted at the time of obtaining the new document in the process of census taking. This makes it impossible to falsify.”

Rodríguez tells how the Civil Registry now possesses an information system known as MAGNA, in which all the citizen data is stored. MAGNA, installed in March of 2010, replaced the AS400 system that was inaugurated in 1982.

For the director, the earlier system had too many failures, which allowed citizen data to be breached. One of the errors that he judged to be an attack against the system’s security was the fact that there existed many passwords in the hands of various officials.

According to Rodríguez, 70 passwords were eliminated belonging to people that did not work at the entity; 80 more were disabled because they were in the power of individuals that had nothing to do with the process and even had the power to administrate (to change) the data.

Now MAGNA has few access passwords and only one of administrator. This system comes with its own computation equipment, while before it was leased.

The debugging process is based in juridical, administrative, physical, and automatic processes. The failures of the earlier system would be the cause of the denunciation by the ex-director of the Registro Civil, Jimmy Salazar, who in July of 2009, denounced before the Prosecutor the supposed illegal sale of information from the database of the identity entity. “The database of the Registry is offered on CD to the highest bidder”, warned the official at the time.

Salazar emphasized that the illegal sale of that information could be used to commit other types of crimes, such as blackmail or the illegal constitution of business. The current administration did not wish to make reference to that denunciation, but insisted that the AS400, even if it technified the management of the database, maintained the problems of a manual archive.

One of the problems of the AS400 is that it did not cover the totality of the country. The same occurred with the manual archive, whose difficulties made it more complicated to verify the data.

The entity did not disclose the cost of MAGNA. What they did say is that this investment is part of the modernization of this entity, which reaches over 100 million dollars. One of the tasks at hand is to digitalize all of the archives.

Galo Sosa
gsosa@telegrafo.com.ec
Reportero-Quito

Source: http://www.partealta.ec/2010062912452/Noticias/Nacional/registro-civil-depura-su-base-de-identificacion

© ACNUR/ S.Aguilar

Freddy holds his eldest son, a six year old, while Yohana, his wife, breastfeeds their two year old. She is Ecuadorean, of Quichua descent. He is Colombian, a refugee, from the department of Huila. The laws permit their children to have one nationality or the other, or even both. But in the jungle, the law is something unreachable due to distance and a lack of the resources necessary to travel to fill out paperwork.

Today, thanks to a campaign of the Civil Registry, these children now have an identity, a name and a nationality: Ecuadorean.

“We came from Nueva Unión, a community in the Putumayo river, where we are nine families. We live three hours from here by boat, and that is not much. But my wife and I cannot afford the fare, which is 30 dollars per person”, says Freddy, as he laughs while playing with his son’s black fingers after taking his fingerprints.

In the frontier communities of this province in northeastern Ecuador, Sucumbios, which marks the northern border with Colombia, the majority of the families are mixed. Refugee fathers, Ecuadorean mothers or vice versa, and with children coming from one side or the other. The limited resources of these families, which earn barely between 50 and 100 dollars on a good month, are insufficient to afford the travel costs associated with filing paperwork such as the registration of the birth of a child.

This situation has made it so that 462 children between 0 and 12 years of age born in this zone of Ecuador, around 30% the children of Colombian refugees, have passed through this temporary Civil Registry office. During 3 days, this state organism has registered and emitted identity documents to children that have lived for a time without any type of “official” existence.

The lack of close sanitary services, the high cost and difficulties associated with transportation and the scarcity of resources of a rural population that lives in harsh conditions combine to generate invisible children in a constant fashion. These are children whom, in many cases, have arrived to adulthood with no type of documents to protect their rights.

“I bore my two children at home”, says Yohana, “with the help of a neighbor who is also a midwife. No doctor tended to me. Afterwards, time passed and we never had the time or the money to bring them to be registered.”
Thanks to the effort of the Civil Registry and other organisms such as the Provincial Health Directorate and ACNUR, the families coming from the communities that reach to the banks of the river the marks the border, the Putumayo, are finally being attended to. Through cooperation between institutions, the documentation of children, health care and information about asylum have been combined into a joint process to expand access to basic services among this isolated population that suffers from the impact of the Colombian conflict.

“It is necessary to continue supporting these institutions so that public policies that guarantee the rights of refugees, their children and these receiving communities can become a reality. Access to these rights is still very limited, and, for example, something as essential as identity can become impossible to obtain”, explains Xaviar Creach, head of the sub-office de ACNUR in Lago Agrio that has supported the Municipality of Puerto El Carmen in order to assure that members of frontier communities have access to the campaign.

Yohana is content, because thanks to the identity document and the certificate they have given her following a medical exam, her son will be able to officially enroll in school. “Before, it was as if he didn’t exist. Now, he will be able to begin his studies like all other children”.

However, in Mushuk Callari, almost at the border between Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru, the Aguinda family hopes for a new opportunity to obtain their own documents. The rising river took their boat the night before the campaign. In the river, something as natural as the rain has impeded once again that they obtain their identity.

Source: http://elmercuriodigital.es/content/view/29308/126/

This was conveyed by the director of the Civil Registry, Alejandro Herrera, during the program “Suffrage”, broadcast by Venezuelan National Radio, who also explained that “this set of activities arises thanks to the continual ties between the Electoral Power and the communities”, adding that “this is a labor of social inclusion”.
Likewise, during the transmission of the program there were heard declarations by the vice president of the CNE, Sandra Oblitas, who said that there is no “better gift for children than the recognition of their rights and their identity on the behalf of the Venezuelan state”.
Regarding the activities in the capital city, she explained that July 17th in the Center for Endogenous Development Fabricio Ojeda de Gramovén, located in to the west of the city, they will be carrying out these Civil Registry days in conjunction with fairs of food and recreational activities as much about sports as cultural, beginning at 8 in the morning.

In another order of ideas, in the suffrage program they reported that everything is now ready to begin the process of training the members of the Municipal and Parish Electoral Boards all over the country, in the face of the upcoming parliamentary elections this coming 26th of September. This activity will be conducted between the 16th and 30th of July and will be composed of two daily workshops of two hours each one, conducted in the morning and afternoon respectively. In this way, the CNE continues in compliance with the electoral schedule established in January of 2010.

Source: http://www.abn.info.ve/node/5270

Manual of best practices composed by UNICEF, collecting successful experiences in the implementation of systems integrating birth registration into health systems in Bangladesh, Brazil, Gambia y Delhi, India. 2000-2009.

As the most relevant data the official emphasized that in the last year 12,237 births were registered, and 2,780 marriages were celebrated, which signifies a 5% decrease over 2008.

With respect to the obtention of IDs on the ground, the mobile team attended to 5,466 people. In regard to motor vehicles it can be said that they distributed 6,747 plates for new vehicles and 1,546 for motorbikes.

With respect to the challenges, and to mention a few, they intend to incorporate the communities of Placilla and Palmilla in the network of offices, in order to achieve attention in the totality of the region. Likewise, he signalled the possibility of opening or reopening a suboffice in the Mall Plaza América de Rancagu. The idea is to decongest the principal branch of the Civil Registry, which manages 40% of the regional demand.

To Read More: El Tipógrafo | Registro civil se plantea el desafío de abrir nuevas oficinas http://www.eltipografo.cl/actualidad/noticia/10520/registro-civil-se-plantea-el-desafio-de-abrir-nuevas-oficinas/#ixzz0uWI4ZgUR

It is presumed that they will no longer issue the traditional family book, now that the new registry certifications will be able to be solicited and consulted online, which will permit citizens to complete their paperwork in whatever office in the country without having to personally go to the registry, except in extraordinary cases.

In addition, they will be able to obtain said certifications in any of the official languages. The objective of this project, which is now being referred to Congress for its parliamentary approval, is to quicken the process and eliminate unnecessary bureaucratic paperwork, as well as configuring an electronic Civil Registry, “modern, rapid, accessible, and singular” in all of Spain. So has it been outlined by the first female vice-president, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega in the most recent cabinet press conference, in which she has underlined that the new Civil Registry will have the citizen as the “central entity” and in addition it will presume a “dejudicialization” which will liberate judges from tasks that do not contribute value to their function.

In October it will already be possible to fill out certain forms online.

The law still must pass through the Parliament, for which reason it will still be some time until citizens can benefit from these advantages. But De la Vega has said that many of these forms be able to be filed online this upcoming October.

In this sense, it is important to keep in mind that the plan to digitalize the Civil Registry is already quite advanced, and thanks to the electronic DNI the access to the database will be functioning in this fall.

Source: http://noticias.lainformacion.com/espana/adios-al-libro-de-familia-el-registro-civil-sera-electronico_t07LYIFFVwqZviMvSisDG/