Operation Birthright Responds to Concern Highlighted in Report
By: , March 19, 2024
Photo: Adrian Walker
Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness (centre), hands over a birth certificate to Tavia Richards-Murray, guardian for Ashley Williams, one of the first recipients under the National Identification System (NIDS) ‘Operation Birthright’ Programme, that was launched at Jamaica House in Kingston on September 9, 2022. Sharing the moment are then Minister without Portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister, Hon. Floyd Green (right); Modernisation of State Specialist, Inter-American Development Bank, Benjamin Roseth, and Representative of the Leader of the Opposition, Dr. Angela Brown-Burke.The Full Story
The Government’s National Identification System (NIDS) ‘Operation Birthright’ Progamme is actively responding to a concern highlighted in the Jamaica ‘Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2022: Situation of Women and Children’.
The report, which was launched on Friday (March 15) at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Regional Headquarters in St. Andrew, found that Jamaica has almost universal registration of births among children under five years, at 99 per cent, but 16 per cent of children in that age cohort do not possess birth certificates.
The proportion is a little higher for boys at 18 per cent, than for girls, at 14 per cent.
“Among children younger than one year old, three out of every five or 60 per cent have a birth certificate, compared to 96 per cent of four-year-old children. Among children who live in the poorest households, about three-quarters or 76 per cent of them have a birth certificate, compared to nine out of every 10 or 90 per cent of children who live in the richest households,” the report read in part.
Operation Birthright was launched in September 2022 by Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, at a cost of US$350,000.
It is estimated that some 200,000 Jamaicans do not have legal proof of identity.
The Operation Birthright initiative has since provided identity registration support to needy children and adults without identification documents.
Among those who have received birth certificates are 36 inmates of the St. Catherine Adult Correctional Centre, 17 residents from Clarendon North Central and others.
To be eligible for Operation Birthright, persons must be born in Jamaica, be at least one year old and have a maximum monthly income of $37,000.
The MICS was carried out by the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) as part of the Global MICS Programme.
The Global MICS Programme was developed by UNICEF in the 1990s as an international multipurpose household survey programme to support countries in collecting internationally comparable data on a wide range of indicators about children and women.