The free mobile registration project aims to mitigate protection risks by ensuring that civil records and legal documents are availed by the typhoon survivors.
The UN Refugee Agency is launching a free mobile registration project in Typhoon Haiyan-battered central Philippines where nearly fifty percent of the survivors lost their civil documents when the storm surge wiped out their homes and properties.
The loss of civil documents places individuals to become vulnerable to discrimination and exploitation that may lead to violations of their rights as citizens of the state.
The free mobile registration project aims to mitigate these protection risks by ensuring that civil records and legal documents are availed by the survivors, including birth and marriage certificates, and a more convenient process to secure death certificates for their family members who perished in Haiyan. It targets to register, reconstruct, and issue civil documents to 100,000 individuals. The documents will reestablish their civil identities thereby allowing them to access state welfare, education, and employment.
“This documentation project which is free of charge is one durable solution we identified for vulnerable populations and communities to continue to access state welfare, education, and employment,” said Bernard Kerblat, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Representative in the Philippines.
Most of the Philippine government’s basic services like the conditional cash transfer program and social pension schemes available for the vulnerable and the disadvantaged require the presentation of a birth certificate included in the list of beneficiaries.
“Unless the affected population is given identification through the reconstruction of their birth certificates as a first step in rebuilding their lives, relying on the resiliency of the Filipino people will not be enough and a lot of them will remain vulnerable,” said Kerblat.
UNHCR will support 20 local civil registrar offices in the provinces of Leyte and Samar and has partnered with a local non-government organization, Initiatives for Dialogue and Empowerment through Alternative Legal Services, Inc. (IDEALS Inc.) in implementing this legal service to the affected population as well as those who have no proper documents before the typhoon. Together with the Department of Social Welfare and Development and with the support from other UN Agencies, the project is aimed to be fully implemented within three months.
UNHCR has experience in implementing a civil documentation program for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Mindanao since 2011. It has previously carried out this emergency intervention in the aftermath of Typhoons Washi and Bopha, and in conflict-stricken areas in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. To date, it has served over 200,000 civil documents to IDPs giving them a new lease on life.
CONTACT PERSONS:
Marmie Liquigan 09189208765 | [email protected] (Manila)
Keneath John Bolisay 09155921568 | [email protected] (Tacloban)
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