Awareness Campaigns Encourage DRC Citizens to Register for Birth Certificates

KIRUMBA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO — In Kirumba, a village in DRC’s northeastern Lubero territory, land ownership is the basis of all wealth. It’s also a matter of succession – a person inherits land from his or her parents. But not without a birth certificate. Bea Masika, a Kirumba resident, tells a cautionary tale about land ownership. She grew up with her mother at her grandparents’ home and was registered for a birth certificate that listed her grandfather instead of her father. “That is the reason why I did not have the right to my biological father’s inheritance,” Masika says.

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