The ManicaPost
Rumbidzayi Zinyuke Senior Reporter
Parliamentarians have agreed to push for a 12-month moratorium that grants all children of school-going age born in Zimbabwe access birth certificates regardless of their parents’ nationality.
This was one of the four strategic objectives adopted by the parliamentarians who attended the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees dialogue in Vumba last week.
The other objectives adopted include aligning nationality laws with the Constitution and international standards and instruments, to ensure everyone has access to civil documentation and to ensure decentralisation of the RG’s Office go closer to the people so that they donot travel long distances.
The dialogue with parliamentarians was aimed at coming up with recommendations of how Parliament can be involved in ending the challenge of statelessness.
Speaking at the end of the meeting, Chegutu West legislator Cde Dexter Nduna said there was need for Parliament to play a facilitatory role to ensure Zimbabwe reduces the number of people who have no nationality.
“The issue of giving our people citizen status, documenting them and making sure they have birth certificates and registration certificates is key. The Births and Registration Act speaks about registering our children within 42 days and if we adhere to these principles, we cannot go wrong,” he said.
Parliamentarians proposedfor the moratorium to run from January 2020 to January 2021 and that there be a joint committee comprising of members from the parliamentary portfolio committees of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs; Home Affairs and Defence, Labour and Social Welfare as well as the Thematic Committee on Human rights.
“We cannot achieve an upper middle income economy enunciated by president Mnangagwa by 2030 if we do not adhere to the ethos and values of documenting our citizens. We could be losing a lot of technocrats to other nations whose laws are amenable to giving people a nationality,” said Cde Nduna.
He said Section 38 (32) speaks about the issue of anybody who has been living in Zimbabwe continuously being entitled to citizenship while Section 2 of the constitution speaks about the constitution being the supreme law of the land and aligning the different laws that deal with the issue of citizenship to it was important.
Chimanimani West Member of Parliament Joshua Sacco said giving children birth certificates would give them a sense of belonging.
“No person should be without identity; no person should be without a state. It is up to parliament to understand and lobby for change of legislation where necessary. A moratorium to say all children under a certain age should automatically have a birth certificate andalso accommodate those on borderline communities, farmworkers is needed,” he said.
According to deputy president of the Senate Lt General (Retired) Mike Nyambuya, approximately 30 percent of two million farm workers and their families in Zimbabwe are believed to be of foreign descent and have not been able to acquire any form of identification for themselves and their children.
Mutasa north legislator ChidoMadiwa said women and children were the most affected constituency and there was a need to ensure that they are protected.
In 2014, UNHCR launched the #I belong campaign which seeks to end statelessness by 2024 and Zimbabwe is part of the campaign after making pledges to contribute to ending the scourge.
The provision of “legal identity for all, including birth registration,” is also among the UN Sustainable Development Goals which will guide and focus action by countries and the UN until 2030.
UNHCR deputy director, regional bureau for Southern Africa Mr Leonard Zulu said the commitment by Zimbabwe to ensuring that everyone has registration documents was encouraging.
“We adopted four strategic objectives that will be followed by Parliament to make sure everybody is included in the Zimbabwean society. They should make sure that the laws are aligned with the constitution and the laws are in line with international standards and instruments,” he said.
The Acts that are before parliament include the Citizenship bill, the Marriages bill, which will seek to ensure that a married woman can retain her nationality after the dissolution of a marriage.
UNHRC acting country representative Mr Shana Kaninda said the organisation would continue working with Government to ensure that every citizen receives a form of identification.
“We will draw an action plan on the implementation of the four strategic objectives. Each objective has a list of activities to be carried out and they all have timelines on when they should be achieved for us to beat statelessness by 2024,” he said.
UNHCR recently provided support to the Registrar General’s office to facilitate the documentation of victims of cyclone Idai who lost their identity documents.
So far, the programme has seen more than 3000 people in Chimanimani receive birth certificates and national IDs. More people are expected to benefit from the second phase of the programme which will be rolled out in Chipinge next.
