Socioeconomic determinants of birth registration in Ghana
Published: 15/Jun/2015
The first point of call between individuals and their states is being registered and counted as part of the state, bestowing on them all rights and privileges that the state provides. Dow described birth registration as the first ticket to citizenship without which an individual does not exist legally and could be denied privileges and rights a nation allows. The Plan International elaborated the rights perspective position in the following:
A birth certificate is the first official acknowledgement of a child’s existence by the State and is essential if they are to access other rights. Where births remain unregistered, there is an implication that children are not recognised as persons before the law … access to fundamental rights and freedoms may be compromised … existence has never been recorded, there is no guarantee that their disappearance will be either … as they will not be included in statistical information about children, their situation cannot be monitored (p.2).
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