Children Quotes Inspirational Biography
Source (google.com.pk )Birth registration is one of the fundamental and basic human rights of a child. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 7) categorically states and makes it binding upon the States Parties, ratified by Pakistan on 19 November 1990, to undertake all appropriate legislative, administrative and other measures for a child to be registered immediately after birth and have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents. In its Concluding Observations on the third and fourth country periodic reports in November 2009, submitted by Pakistan in 2007, the Committee on the Rights of the Child notes that while many efforts have been implemented by the Government of Pakistan to promote timely birth registration, still more than 70 per cent of children are not registered at birth, especially girls, children belonging to a religious or minority group, refugee children and children living in rural areas. It, further, recommends that full implementation of measures are needed to remove structural obstacles to birth registration, launch a mass cost-free birth registration campaign and simplify the procedures for birth registration in order to cover all persons in the country, regardless of sex, religion, status or nationality, in accordance with Article 7 of the Convention.
Accordingly, UNICEF Child Protection Section, in consultation and coordination with Local Government Departments and other relevant stakeholders, has identified birth registration as one of the priority action areas for supporting national and provincial child protection systems in Pakistan. UNICEF’s Child Protection Strategy, also, identifies birth registration as one of the priority action areas for supporting national child protection systems. The Child Protection Strategy recognizes birth registration as a human right, which can strengthen children’s access to legal protection and basic social services.
The importance of birth registration stems from its legal, procedural and statistical needs. An unregistered birth denies the legal right to that child to an official identity, a recognized name and nationality. Even though there are no uniform national guidelines in Pakistan requiring parents to produce a birth certificate at the time of school enrolment, lack of birth registration is believed to be keeping significant numbers of rural poor children out of school. It may also be restricting their access to social protection programmes linked to the provision of health prevention and health care services, including immunization. A child whose birth is not registered does not have even the minimal protection that a birth certificate provides in Pakistan against early and forced marriage, child labour and employment in hazardous industries, recruitment in the armed forces, illegal adoption and trafficking. Birth registration can help in ensuring that children are enrolled in schools at the right age. It helps enforcing laws relating to minimum age for employment and allows children to claim their rightful inheritance. Birth registration ensures that children who come in conflict with the law are treated as juveniles, given special protection and not treated as adults. It can help separated children and those who are without any adult care to get reunited to their families. In later life, the unregistered child is unable to get national identification card, a passport, open a bank account, obtain credit and find employment. For any government, birth registration is important in terms of effective policymaking and planning for provision of services to the village level. Effective registration of births will allow Pakistan to measure trends, differentiate among population groups as per their needs and identify geographic, social and gender disparities.
The status of birth registration in AJK, however, is far less than satisfactory. In AJK, less than a quarter of births are registered. (MICS Report AJK 2009). In Muzaffarabad district in particular, the registration rates are reported to be only 12.2%. Similarly, registration in earthquake-affected areas is 20.8% as compared 28.3 in non-affected areas. Early birth registration (0 – 11 months) is also recorded significantly lower (14.1%) than older age cohorts. The Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, conducted in 2007 and 2008 in AJK, also found that almost half of those who do not have their children’s birth registered are simply unaware. Another 9.6% do not know where to register births.
Birth registration system in Pakistan, as a whole, is marred by several deficiencies, which include, but are not limited to, inhibitive social norms; dichotomous and weak policy and legislative framework resulting in overlapping mandates; feeble, obsolete and in some cases non-existent service delivery infrastructure/apparatus; inadequate resource and budgetary allocation; inefficient management and coordination amongst different players of birth registration system; lack of awareness among the general public as well as officials under whose jurisdiction birth registration comes; difficulty in physically accessing delivery points; prohibitive direct and indirect costs associated with birth registration, and perceived, apparent, lack of social and political utility of birth registration. Importantly, as reflected in various legislative and administrative steps taken in recent past on the universalization of birth registration in Pakistan, and particularly in AJK, there is strong recognition among concerned policy and decision-making circles for taking all necessary measures to significantly improve registration rates. UNICEF has been working with local governments and NADRA, including civil society and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), to increase knowledge on the importance of birth registration and strengthen support for birth registration through technical backstopping of concerned government functionaries, placing special emphasis on vulnerable and excluded groups.
Needless to say that there is an imminent urgency for a clear shift in the approach towards universal birth registration in Pakistan. The project-based approach has achieved little in this regard. UNICEF has been successful in generating some evidence from the field and building consensus with the Local Government Department AJK and other relevant stakeholders that the vision to accomplish ‘universal child birth registration’ requires a system strengthening and institutional approach. This would only be possible if the governments in AJK will have coherent and concerted strategies for strengthening the birth registrations systems in these specific contexts. Moving towards it, the Local Government AJK requested UNICEF for providing technical and financial assistance to the Department for formulation of a comprehensive birth registration strategy.
It is pertinent to note that UNICEF had organized a national level consultation with the representatives from the provincial Working Groups – including FATA – particularly the Local Government Departments, in which consensus was built on producing provincial and regional birth registrations strategies for strengthening systems in accomplishing universal birth registration. The Local Government and Rural Development Department, AJK later endorsed the same in a consultation meeting held with UNICEF on December 27, 2013.
The birth registration strategies are now being developed using the system building approach. The process will be comprehensively consultative and based on evidence collected so far from the ground, in addition to the review of other relevant literature and discussions with the key stakeholders and policy makers. Hence, the framework, which will be used for this formulating these strategies, will focus on all aspects of the system including enabling environment, demand, supplies and quality and continuity.
Purpose of the assignment:
The purpose of this assignment, therefore, is to provide highly technical support to the Local Governments of AJK for developing comprehensive birth registration strategy for their specific contexts. The strategy will provide an overarching vision for universal birth registration through an institutional and system approach informed by evidence and bottleneck analysis of the existing birth registration systems. The strategy will, therefore, construct coherent and comprehensive plans of action, with clearly allocated roles and responsibilities, including resources, for achieving the strategic vision, goals and objectives.
Specific Objective
To provide technical support to the Local Governments AJK for developing comprehensive and multi-actor birth registration strategy through consultative planning processes and meaningful participation of all stakeholders.
An approach to formulating birth registration strategy for AJK:
UNICEF introduced Child Protection Strategy in 2008. The strategy suggested paradigm shift for ensuring children are protected from violence, abuse and exploitation. The strategy, therefore, proposed a child protection system approach, which has been comprehensively defined and delineated by a group of universities and child protection, focused organized and is available for adaptation in any contexts across the globe. UNICEF has recently adopted ‘equity approach’ to programing and policies formulation that promises benefits to the most disadvantaged, marginalized and neglected segments of the society. To monitor results for children through this approach, the organization and its partners utilize a methodology called “Monitoring Results for Equity System”. (MoRES). This tool monitors programs and policies to ensure that the equity approach towards reaching the most marginalised children is evidence-based and, therefore, makes the expected impact.
In order to arrive at a comprehensive system-wide reform strategy for birth registration in AJK, it is imperative that key stakeholders agree on using these approaches and institutionalize these through formulating the proposed strategy. The MoRES framework is based on four domains and ten corresponding determinants, namely, Enabling Environment (social norms; legislation/policy; budget/expenditure; Management / Coordination); Supply (availability of essential commodities/inputs; access to adequate services facilities and information; Demand (financial access; social and cultural practices and beliefs; and timings and continuity) and Quality (quality of care).
Since, these approaches are highly re-assuring in strengthening any system and monitoring its performance for achieving results for children, these will be used for formulating the birth registration strategy for AJK. Through consultative planning processes, the stakeholders will utilize the framework to build consensus on identifying bottlenecks and using the analysis for informing the strategy formulation. There has already been some work done in this regard, which will be used for starting the strategy formulation. Its details will be shared with the consultant(s) and other stakeholders as reference documents.
Enabling Environment:
An Enabling Environment underpins long-term demand, utilisation and sustainability of Birth Registration services. The first determinant under the Enabling Environment domain is Social Norms, which may not, automatically, affect the utilisation and demand of Birth Registration services in Pakistan; however, the fact that population at large, particularly parents, do not see any value in having a Birth Registration certificate has adverse effects on overall Birth Registration demand. Research has also revealed that people usually ascribe to identities other than their citizenship, i.e. ethnicity, and therefore seek birth registration only when it has become absolutely necessary for certain documentation reasons, i.e. passport or immigration.
The second determinant, Legislation/Policy, needs careful attention as this has direct effect not only on the social utility of the service but also informs the institutional arrangement as well as resource commitment for Birth Registration. There is a plethora of laws, rules and procedures dealing with Birth Registration under different mandates and jurisdictions. For example, for Pakistani expatriates, citizenship act and rules apply, for people living under Cantonment jurisdictions, Cantonments Ordinance dealing with Birth registration is applicable and, additionally, National Database and Registration Authority ordinance (a step towards complete civil registration system) also requires the maintenance of Birth Registration data nationwide. However, for all practical purposes and intent, mainstream Pakistan is provided Birth Registration services through Local Government Ordinances and Act. The detailed procedures are further elaborated through byelaws and rules governing Birth Registration. These rules describe the institutional arrangements, applicable fees, forms and verification processes for Birth Registration. Any suggestion, however, for legislative change needs to be carefully examined, together, in terms of its impact on institutional arrangement; provincial vs. federal jurisdiction and mandate; service delivery infrastructure, and access to eventual service users; and likely support and acceptability for change by different stakeholders.
Budget/Expenditure is another vital determinant for an effective Birth Registration regime in Pakistan. Presently, there is little or no direct allocation for Birth Registration. Some of the Birth Registration facilities are funded through the revenue generated through fees and indirect allocation (allocations made to run the office of Union Council Secretary, which has several functions, Birth Registration being one of them). This has particular implication on the fee abolishment drive, which, without ensuring budget allocation and disbursement may further deteriorate the services.
Lastly, under Enabling Environment domain Management and Coordination of Birth Registration services needs critical reorganisation. Presently, Local Government and Rural Development Department (LG&RDD) is charged with overall responsibility with sporadic support from NADRA, Health and Education Department. LG&RDD discharges the Birth Registration function through Union Councils in rural areas, and Municipal Councils and Metropolitan Corporations in urban areas. Pakistan inherited this colonial era setup installed for village level control and some basic planning and service delivery functions of the time. However, the arrangement seems to wanting to keep up with modern day demands. In addition, in order to have wider support for Birth Registration data, it is imperative that the data is integrated in overall planning cycle and has a wider user base. It further needs coordinated efforts and support from important players, such as, Local Government, NADRA, Health, Education, Finance, Revenue (land record) and Pⅅ departments.
Children Quotes Inspirational Children Quotes Tumblr And Sayings From The Bible For Parents Love For Tattoos Funny And sayings For Parents Islam About Learning
Children Quotes Inspirational Children Quotes Tumblr And Sayings From The Bible For Parents Love For Tattoos Funny And sayings For Parents Islam About Learning
Children Quotes Inspirational Children Quotes Tumblr And Sayings From The Bible For Parents Love For Tattoos Funny And sayings For Parents Islam About Learning
Children Quotes Inspirational Children Quotes Tumblr And Sayings From The Bible For Parents Love For Tattoos Funny And sayings For Parents Islam About Learning
Children Quotes Inspirational Children Quotes Tumblr And Sayings From The Bible For Parents Love For Tattoos Funny And sayings For Parents Islam About Learning
Children Quotes Inspirational Children Quotes Tumblr And Sayings From The Bible For Parents Love For Tattoos Funny And sayings For Parents Islam About Learning
Children Quotes Inspirational Children Quotes Tumblr And Sayings From The Bible For Parents Love For Tattoos Funny And sayings For Parents Islam About Learning
Children Quotes Inspirational Children Quotes Tumblr And Sayings From The Bible For Parents Love For Tattoos Funny And sayings For Parents Islam About Learning
Children Quotes Inspirational Children Quotes Tumblr And Sayings From The Bible For Parents Love For Tattoos Funny And sayings For Parents Islam About Learning
Children Quotes Inspirational Children Quotes Tumblr And Sayings From The Bible For Parents Love For Tattoos Funny And sayings For Parents Islam About Learning
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