Malawi’s 7 million children without legal identity

Around 7 million Malawians under the age of 16 do not have birth certificates or any other legal identity documents.

The government has since launched the National Birth Registration Campaign (NBRC) as a deliberate move to register all children at birth in various hospitals.

The campaign is implemented by the National Registration Bureau (NRB), a government entity under the Ministry of Homeland Security.

NRB Chief Registration Officer for Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Rhodric Langwe says so far 3,490,134 children have been registered.

“A pilot phase was done in 2022 in Mwanza, Karonga, and Lilongwe Rural East. 615 children were registered and issued with birth certificates in these districts,” Langwe explained.

“The exercise will continue this year after the National ID mop up exercise. Once this is done, almost everyone in Malawi will be registered and have an identity document,” he added.

He stressed the significance of registering children, saying they have the right to preserve identity, nationality, name, and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference.

NRB has also embarked on a Short Message Service (SMS) campaign to raise awareness on the national ID registration processes.

The SMS will allow an identity holder to follow processes regarding their national ID cards, birth certificates and death certificates.

Currently, more than 12 million Malawians have registered and have a unique ID number on their national IDs, since the registration exercise started in 2016.