Celebrating Legal Identity Day: “Celebrating the right to be visible”

Yaoundé  – “Legal identity is essential and deserves a dedicated day on September 16!”. With these words, Mr. Ebela Yacynthe, Senior Technical Advisor at the Bureau National de l’Etat Civil (BUNEC) and Ambassador of the “ID for Africa” platform, opened the round table dedicated to the campaign to promote Legal Identity Day in Cameroon.

This round table is part of a series of initiatives aimed at modernizing Cameroon’s civil registry system and facilitating access to a legal identity for all. These initiatives include the first National Forum of Mayors on Birth Registration, organized on April 26 and 27, 2024, under the theme:

“One child, one birth certificate, one identity”. The forum recommended that Cameroon officially recognize September 16 as International Legal Identity Day, following the example of some thirty African countries.

To celebrate this day is to encourage public authorities to find solutions to ensure that some 7,000 people in Cameroon who have no proof of identity can obtain one. It also helps to combat the phenomenon of “ghost children” in communities.

To this end, IOM is supporting BUNEC agencies in the East and Littoral regions, and the Yaoundé 6 and Yaoundé 3 arrondissement communes, in reconstituting civil status documents and issuing identity papers for internally displaced persons. This initiative is part of IOM’s commitment alongside the Cameroonian government to “provide all migrants with legal and adequate identity documents”, in line with Goal 4 of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, and target 10.7 of MDG 10, which aims to “facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration through well-planned and managed migration policies”.

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