Birth Registration Consultant, Home-based At UN High Commissioner for Refugees

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is offering a homebased consultancy within the Statelessness Team in our Regional Bureau for Southern Africa.

The UNHCR Bureau for Southern Africa covers 16 States: Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Comoros, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The consultancy is intended to cover all 16 countries.

UNHCR is a global organisation dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights, and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people. Every year, millions of men, women and children are forced to flee their homes to escape conflict and persecution. We are in over 125 countries, using our expertise to protect and care for millions.

• Title: Birth Registration Consultant
• Duty Station: Home-based
• Duration: Three months with expected start date of 15 September 2021 until 15 December 2021
• Contract Type: Individual Consultancy Contract
• Closing date: 3 September 2021
• Start date: 15 September 2021

Organisational context

Statelessness refers to the condition of an individual who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law.[1] It amounts to the violation of the fundamental right to a nationality. Although stateless people may sometimes also be refugees, the two categories are distinct in international law. While human rights are in principle universal and inherent, in practice a large range of fundamental human rights are denied to stateless people: they are often unable to obtain identity documents; they may be detained for reasons linked to their statelessness; and often they are denied access to education and health services or blocked from obtaining employment.

Statelessness in Southern Africa affects both adults and children, and stems from gaps in nationality legislative and administrative framework related to nationality. Lack of birth registration is also an important risk factor. The birth certificate is an essential, indeed primordial, tool to establish an individual’s identity. The lack thereof is a severe obstacle to the establishment of one’s nationality. In the region, birth registration rate is on average less than 50% with great disparity between countries. Other aggravating risk factors, which tremendously heighten when combined with lack of birth registration, include long term migration and protracted forced displacement.

It is estimated that there are millions of stateless persons worldwide. Due to lack of mechanisms to capture data on stateless populations in Southern Africa, the full scale of the problem has not been quantified. However, the World Bank estimates that over 137 million people in the region lack identity documents.^[2]

UNHCR is the UN Agency mandated by the UN General Assembly to address statelessness globally. UNHCR advises States on the identification and protection of stateless people, as well as the prevention and reduction of statelessness. Under the prevention pillar of its statelessness mandate UNHCR works with States towards universal birth registration, and advocates for national identity and civil registration systems to be linked at the country level based on a life-cycle approach to identity management.

To help achieve the goal of UNHCR’s #IBelong Campaign^[3] to End Statelessness by 2024, Action 7 of UNHCR’s Global Action Plan to End Statelessness^[4] requires UNHCR to support States to “ ensure birth registration for the prevention of statelessness”, as well as necessary steps to ensure universal birth registration. Pursuant to Action 7, in 2016, UNHCR and UNICEF launched a coalition on every child’s right to a nationality.[5] The Coalition aims to develop, to expand and to strengthen international co-operation to raise awareness about and combat the hidden problem of childhood statelessness. It also aims to promote the right of every child to acquire a nationality. In Southern Africa, there is very limited implementation of the coalition.

During the High-Level Segment on Statelessness of the 2019 UNHCR Executive Committee, 7 States committed to improve their birth registration, i.e., Angola, Comoros, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In addition, 3 States have developed National Action Plans to End Statelessness that specifically include an action on the strengthening of birth registration, i.e., Madagascar, Namibia and Eswatini.

The position

Considering other stakeholders mandates and current activities, the consultant is expected to develop a strategy on UNHCR involvement at country and regional level with the view to reduce the risk of statelessness by strengthening access to universal birth registration for all individuals born in a Southern Africa Country, including anyone, regardless of age, who has never been registered.

The study will concentrate on all Southern African States, with particular emphasis on countries that have committed to improve birth registration systems, namely Angola, Comoros, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Namibia, Eswatini, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The Consultancy will take the form of a desk review methodology to collect, organize and analyse existing information; identify trends and gaps in achieving universal birth registration in Southern Africa, and develop a birth registration strategy for the region.

Duties and responsibilities

The desk review must include: (non-exhaustive list):

• Analysis of the legal and administrative framework applicable to birth registration,
• Analysis of statistics, policies and practices relating to birth registration (including for specific categories, e.g., children born out of wedlock, orphans, foundlings, foreigners, migrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, and nomadic populations) that could have an impact on the risk of statelessness
• Review of existing research and literature on birth registration in Southern Africa written by NGOs, research institutes, independent researchers, other UN agencies, etc.
• Review of existing national and regional strategies to strengthen birth registration and legal identity.

The consultant will draft a report of no more than 80 pages (excluding annexes) using font Times New Roman 12, that will:

• Identify gaps in the legislative and administrative frameworks related to civil registration, including gaps related to the regularization of individuals not registered during legal time frame, the regularization of nationals born outside the country, and the access to birth registration by undocumented foreigners.
• Analyze the capacity of birth registration structures at country level, highlighting in particular areas where there is a need of support for capacity building as well as financial and equipment needs.
• Recommend UNHCR’s strategy and activities at country level and regional level in view of 1) increasing access to birth registration at country level, including civil registration of adults 2) raising awareness on the importance of birth registration and the prevention of statelessness.
• Highlight good practices that could be promoted.
• Recommend specific SADC intervention and/or special transnational activities (including interstate cooperation) to help address some challenges related to birth registration.

Specific Objectives

• Provide a baseline on birth registration for each country in Southern Africa reflecting on gaps in legislation and practice, statistics, structures, key stakeholders, existing strategy and highlighting concrete obstacles/challenges faced by both adults and children in accessing birth registration.
• Identify existing and ongoing birth registration activities and campaigns in countries in the region.
• Identify key actors on birth registration, in the different countries covered in the region, that UNHCR can partner with to work on statelessness – Government, Academia, NGOs, CSOs and UN Agencies.
• Develop UNHCR’s country-based strategy by identifying activities where UNHCR can be involved in at the country level, as well as identifying specific activities that could be implemented under the Coalition to end childhood statelessness.
• Identify challenges in implementing the UNHCR-UNICEF Coalition, and recommendations on how to improve.
• Identify regional actors whose expertise/capacity can be leveraged.
• Develop UNHCR regional strategy, with the aim to support UNHCR’s country operations.
• Identify potential role for Southern African Development Community (SADC) in strengthening birth registration of its member states including through interstate cooperation.
• Identify good practices to strengthen birth registration

Essential minimum qualifications and professional experience required

The ideal candidate will

• Master’s degree in law
• At least 10 years’ experience in the field of civil registration
• Proficiency in English and French mandatory, knowledge of Portuguese desirable
• Knowledge of civil registration legal and administrative frameworks of Southern African States
• Experience in drafting strategy and policy
• Proven experience in research in the field of civil registration
• Ability to produce high quality outputs in a timely manner while understanding and anticipating the evolving needs of client and ability to work in a multi-cultural environment.

Location

The successful candidate will be home-based reporting to the Regional Bureau for Southern Africa in Pretoria, South Africa.

Conditions

It is a full-time role with working hours starting from 8.00 am to 17:30 pm Monday to Thursday, and 8:00 to 13:30 on Fridays (40 hours per week).

[1] Article 1(1) of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons

[2] http://id4d.worldbank.org/global-dataset

[3] https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/

[4] https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/global-action-plan-2014-2024/

[5] https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/unicef-unhcr-coalition-child-right-nationality/