ABSTRACT
In an effort to ensure universal access to basic human rights, essential social facilities such as healthcare, education, justice systems and financial institutions, and the planning of an overall development agenda, there is the need to provide official documentation of legal identity for all persons. Identity registration through birth registration and certification is regarded as the first document that serves as a form of legal identity for individuals at birth. As states in the international system make conscious efforts towards attaining the 17 Sustainable Development Goals before 2030, the 16th SDG which calls for Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions through Target 16.9, aims at tackling issues concerned with the provision of legal identity for all. This includes birth registration by identifying the proportion of children under the age of 5years whose births have been registered with civil authority. In Ghana, it is estimated that about 15% of the population remains without a legal identity and hence, their inability to enjoy their rights and benefit from social structures. This study employs the use of the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey to determine the influence of some selected socio-economic and demographic variables such as the level of education of the mother, type of place of residence, wealth index, age and sex of the child on birth registration status within the country. Through univariate analysis, frequencies and percentages were used to describe the characteristics of the respondents. Cross tabulations and chi-square tests were conducted at the bivariate level of analysis to determine the relationships between selected socio-economic and demographic variables and birth registration status. The binary logistic regression model was employed at the multivariate level to examine how socio-economic and demographic variables correlated with birth registration status. Results show that birth registration was dependent on factors like the mother’s education, wealth index, the type of place of residence and mother’s religion.
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
Since its founding in the late 1940s, the United Nations (UN) and its technical organizations have actively led the global development agenda. Until the 1990s, the strategy was divided and disjointed initiated at multiple World Summits and Conferences by its specific organizations or funds to tackle three aspects of financial, social and environmental development. The MDGs and the Millennium Declaration saw the convergence of the development agenda of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF); World Health Organization (WHO); United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and other development agencies (ibid). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which were recently implemented reflect further consolidation of the development agenda. Equity, human rights and non-discrimination are also strengthened by the SDGs1. A series of global consultations were conducted online and offline to create a new, people-centred development agenda. Civil society organisations, citizens, researchers, scholars, and private industries from around the globe were all actively involved in the process. The SDGs comprise of 17 goals and 169 targets. The 17 goals are; “No Poverty; Zero Hunger; Good Health and Well-being; Quality Education; Gender Equality; Clean Water and Sanitation; Affordable and Clean Energy; Decent Work and Economic Growth; Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure; Reduce Inequality; Sustainable Cities and Communities; Responsible Consumption and Production; Climate Action; Life Under Water; Life on Land; Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions; and Partnership for the Goals.”
1 UN General assembly. 69th Session. Agenda Item 13(a) [Last accessed on 2015 Nov 09]. Available at http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/70/1&Lang=E . [Ref list]
The concept for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) arose during the process leading up to the Rio20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. The Rio20 Conference in 2012 agreed in its result document The Future We Want to negotiate and build consensus on the SDGs, unlike many others (UN General Assembly 2012). Negotiations to form the SDGs took place mainly through the United Nations (UN) Open Working Group with simultaneous, but not always synchronized, discussions regarding funding and the broader post-2015 development agenda. Furthermore, consultation with a broad range of actors took place at the UN, at the regional and national level, as well as through a web-based platform that reached a wider audience. These debates have resulted in a set of 17 SDGs with 169 targets (Stevens & Kanie, 2016).
In Africa, the implementation by the General Assembly of the United Nations of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015 has re-focused worldwide attention on the core of the sustainable development discourse. Meanwhile, in order to attain sustainable development, African countries prioritize structural transformation in their domestic and continental development programmes (Armah, & Baerk, 2015). The achievement of the SDGs cannot be done without financial outlays. Africa needs a double‐digit growth rate of 16.6% per year between 2015 and 2030 to achieve some of the goals by 2030, which corresponds to an investment-to-GDP ratio and a financing gap to GDP ratio of 87.5 and 65.6 per cent per annum, respectively. However, estimates of the growth rates needed differ extensively across sub- regions and individual countries ‘ levels of development (Kedir et al, 2017).
The prioritization of the goals is very important, more especially the goals must dovetail into the development capabilities and agenda of states. Ghana, a member of the United Nations, and whose president co-incidentally is a co-chair to the SDGs has reaffirmed his commitment to see through the implementation of the goals.
The commitment to building strong democratic structures of state has been a directive principle guiding the practice of the theory of political governance in the fourth republic. Institutions of states have been retooled to perform their duties creditably.
The provision of peace, justice and strong institutions form an integral part of sustainable development. SDG 16 seeks to encourage peaceful, inclusive societies, provide access to justice, as well as to shape effective, accountable and inclusive institutions. The 9th target of SDG 16 (Target 16.9) demands for the provision of legal identity for all, including birth registration by the year 2030 (Whaites, 2016). The indicator of this target is defined by the proportion of children under 5 years whose births have been registered with a civil authority (ibid). According to the World Bank’s Identification for Development (ID4D) 2018 Global Dataset, Ghanaians constitute about 4.5 million out of about 1 billion people who lack legal identity worldwide (World Bank, 2018). That is, about 15% of Ghana’s population remains unregistered or lack any form of legal identity. About 3.9 million of these people are between the ages of 0 and 18 years and 0.6 million above 18 years (ibid). The 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey estimates that about 7 in 10 children under 5 years have their births registered even though there exist administrative policies and legislation that specify birth registration procedures in Ghana. Unfortunately, birth registration centres nationwide, specifically in rural areas, lack adequate equipment as a result of inadequate financial resources (World Bank, 2014). According to Amo-Adjei and Annim (2015), socio-economic and demographic factors such as distance to centres, type of place of residence, level of education, wealth, political and cultural conditions either enhance or constrain access to birth or identity registration in Ghana.
Statement of Research Problem
Persons without a legal identity, particularly birth registration, do not gain access to fundamental rights, justice and social services. It is in this regard that Target 16.9 demands for the provision of effective civil registration and vital statistics systems that provide a legal form of identity particularly birth registration for all. Examining Agenda 2030 establishes the fact that most goals and targets require a form of identification to enable access to services. Target
16.9 can, therefore, be said to be an enabler to the attainment of other SDGs such as; SDG 4 – Quality Education, SDG 5 – Gender Equality and SDG 10 – Reduction of Inequality (Janowski, 2016). Identification is an important canon of citizenship. The basic proof of citizenship the world over are documentation or certification of birth. These documents give access to and maximize an individual’s rights and privileges to vital services like employment, political participation, and subvention in education et al. Socio-economic and demographic factors like access to registration centres, level of parental education, household income underlie registration processes in Ghana. Indeed, more than ten per cent (10%) of Ghana’s population is without birth certification (Amo-Adjei & Annim, 2015).
