Attachments
Introduction
Access to an identity document is fundamental to help persons be recognized before the law and fully exercise their human rights. The right to a legal identity is enshrined in international law and part of international humanitarian law whereby all persons affected by humanitarian crisis should be entitled to civil documentation.
This briefing note will focus on both birth certificate and national identity cards (in Mozambique known as the Bilhete de Identidade, or simply “BI”). By issuing these documents, the State recognizes the existence of a person as its citizen and allows for the person to enjoy fundamental rights, namely a name, parentage, citizenship and consequently nationality and other rights. Failure to register a birth is a violation of the person's inalienable human right to identity and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Main concerns in Mozambique
In recent years, Mozambique has faced large scale internal displacement resulting from conflict induced violence and recurrent disasters. There are over 800,000 IDPs in northern Mozambique, due to violence in Cabo Delgado2. The tropical cyclones that hit the central regions in the country also displaced some 130,000 persons. In contexts of both conflict and disasters, the sudden nature of displacement obliges IDPs to flee in haste with no time to choose what belongings to take along – in this process, civil documents are often forgotten, lost and/or destroyed. Once these are gone, several obstacles to exercise basic rights arise, such as: to move freely, to vote, to access education, employment, healthcare, bank services and access to humanitarian aid. The lack of civil documentation also hinders IDPs’ self-sufficiency, therefore, limiting access to durable solutions as access to the formal labour market is not possible.