According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Immigration, Safety and Security, approximately 250 000 Namibians don’t have national documents at present.
This is 10% national population.
A 2016 Namibia Intercensal Demographic Survey report (Nids), already showed that 13% of Namibians were not in possession birth certificates at the time of the report’s creation.
The report also revealed that 1,5% of the population was not born in a Naibian country.
Although the latter group is documented, a portion could be stateless.
“We have a lot of undocumented people in the country. About 8% to 10% of the population are currently undocumented,” ministry spokesperson Margaret Kalo said at a press conference yesterday.
She stated that most of these figures involve rural people due to the limited access to services.
“We want to reach our target audience, most importantly the rural community. We know it is hard sometimes to reach them,” she said.
Kalo stated that they are working with governors and councillors to reach these people.
The ministry urged new mothers earlier this year to ensure that their children are registered before they leave the hospital.
“If you register them while they’re young, we may end up not having a lot of people who are undocumented,” she said.
Kalo stated that the ministry’s outreach program targets undocumented Namibians in all areas of the country’s rural areas.
This comes after Ohangwena governor Walde Nagashiya lamented the large number of undocumented people in his region.
During his recent address on the state of the region, he stated that dozens of children still need to have their national documents. The lack of identity documents and national documents was highlighted by him as a major obstacle to inclusion in the school system.
During the 2020/21 financial years, the ministry registered 96,139 births and issued105 691 ID cards. 1 582 South West African identity papers were also converted to Namibian ID cards.
There were 17 353 deaths.
Piet Adams, Windhoek Rural constituency Councillor, spoke at yesterday’s conference. He said that residents of his constituency, which includes Groot Aub have had difficulty obtaining national documents.
“Home affairs doesn’t reach out to the furthest points,” he said.
The Accelerator Laboratory of the United Nations Development Programme, (UNDP), was created by the government. It allows for the application for services such a birth certificate or other national documents.
The project is being implemented through the already established ICT centre in Groot Aub for rural communities.
This project, known as “The Living Lab”, assists the government in adopting digital technologies through integration.
Adams claims that the project, which took over a year to put together, will help the undocumented residents of the area.
Through the Harambee Prosperity Plan II II, the government wants to regularize the status of certain categories of undocumented or stateless people.
According to this plan, the group wants to draft a bill that will be submitted to the Cabinet Committee on Legislation.
This bill should now be filed and promulgated in parliament by 17 February 2023.
Source: namibian
