Unregistered Senegalese youth fight for legal status

It was only when 12-year-old Senegalese schoolboy Lassou Samb was preparing for his end-of-year exams that he was confronted with the fact that he had no legal documentation.

Like many young people in the West African country, Samb was never registered at birth, an omission that could have major consequences for his education. Hundreds of thousands of Senegalese students are taking exams through Wednesday to mark the end of their school year.

But Samb nearly failed the test needed to advance to the next grade because he lacked the required birth certificate. Every year, the exam period highlights a major failure to register births, not just in Senegal but across Africa.

Of the more than 300,000 students who had registered for the final primary school exams, almost 70,000 had no civil status documents, according to the examination department.

The problem can have serious implications, ranging from the protection of rights, access to public services to government policy planning.

Samb, one of six children born in a village in central Senegal, was the only child in his family who was not registered.

“Our (school) principal often calls me into his office to remind me that I haven’t brought my birth certificate yet, but I don’t know what to tell him,” he said.

Samb “was born with a broken hand at a time when things were difficult for us,” said his father Malick, a factory worker.

“The priority then was to treat him.”

Like previous governments, Senegal’s new government this year ignored the rule that a birth certificate is required for exams and allowed children to take exams without a birth certificate.

– Unregistered children –

“There is no question of sacrificing these children twice,” said Moussa Bala Fofana, Minister for Local and Regional Government.

“Firstly, by not registering them at birth, and secondly, by preventing them from taking their exams because they are undocumented, even though they have nothing to do with it,” he said. While 98 percent of births in Europe are registered, in Africa that number is only 44 percent, according to a 2024 WHO report. More than half of the world’s unregistered children live in Africa, a total of about 91 million, the UN children’s agency UNICEF said in 2022.

Birth registration is an important first step in accessing health care, education and justice. It is also a key tool in government planning for health and development.

But long distances to civil registry offices, lack of knowledge, local customs and, in some countries, discriminatory practices and costs can deter parents from registering a birth, UNICEF says.

Some parents ignore or neglect the importance of birth certificates, even though they have up to a year to register their child for free, said Aliou Ousmane Sall, director of Senegal’s national civil registry agency.

After this period, a court must approve the registration and the parents must pay a fee of 4,000 CFA francs ($7).

– Fraud –

Obtaining a birth certificate can take several years due to the difficulty of accessing necessary services, outdated equipment and poorly trained civil servants. “For most of our African countries, we had to make a transition from the colonial state to the post-colonial state,” said Oumar Ba, president of the country’s mayors’ association.

“As a result, many measures were not taken in time. Our states inherited a civil registry that was not properly structured,” he added.