FOCUS
IN
SEARCH
OF THE
RIGHT TO
BELONG
The Zimbabwe Peace Project welcomed the move by government to embark
on a nationwide blitz to reach out to Zimbabweans who needed critical
national documents like birth and death certificates and national Identity
Documents (IDs).
The mobile process, which started on 1April and runs until September 30,
this year, was long overdue considering that since 2020, when the COVID -19
pandemic hit, there has been limited operation of the Registrar General’s
office, and there were restrictions of movements.
The move by the RG’s department culminates from among other things, the
concerns raised by ZPP in its research on access to documentation. A
position paper was produced to analyse the inability of children born of
irregular migrants to access birth certificates after their parents send them
to Zimbabwe to be raised by their parents who are the grandparents of the
children.
The report, titled, ‘Cursed with Statelessness: Consequences of Deprivation
of National Identification Documents,’ noted some of the following issues:
The report found out that in areas near the borders of Zimbabwe, there was
a high number of people migrating to neighbouring countries, leaving their
children in the care of grandparents, who would not be able to acquire
registration documents for them.
In other cases, people migrated to other countries but would not regularize
their stay there. This made it impossible for them to register any children
they bore while living illegally in a foreign country.
As a result, these illegal immigrants would send their children to Zimbabwe
without any documentation.
This posed challenges as the relatives who assume the care of those children
did not have the capacity to acquire birth certificates for them.
The other issue discovered is that of unregistered citizens born within
Zimbabwe that were born to victims of Gukurahundi massacres.
The findings were identified in Matobo districts, other areas of Matabeleland,
and parts of Midlands provinces and in these areas, unregistered citizens
appeared in two sub-groups, namely children of Gukurahundi victims and
grandchildren of victims of post-Gukurahundi massacres.
The study unearthed that though some of their parents are still alive, their
national identity documents were burnt when their belongings were set on
fire during Gukurahundi.
"The other category is those citizens whose parents were killed or subject to
enforced disappearances during Gukurahundi and did not have death
certificates to assist in getting birth certificates for children of the deceased
or disappeared parents," reads part of the ZPP report.
The lack of birth and national documents prevent the affected from
accessing a number of services.
Unregistered individuals are also left with no right to vote or assume
political leadership positions which all depend on a birth certificate that is
inaccessible to them.
The provisions of the Birth and Death Registration (BDR) Act and the
regulations of the DRG require citizens to bring proof of death certificates of
their parents, which is impossible for children of victims of Gukurahundi.
ZPP indicated that the BDR Act is prohibitive, discriminatory, and
disenfranchising as "it is impossible to produce a death certificate of a victim
of Gukurahundi massacres and enforced disappearance."
Although the state has offered grace to the victims of Gukurahundi to
register free of charge, the victims are afraid and intimidated as noted in the
ZPP report.
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