AMERICA/DOMINICAN REPUBLIC - There is always a high number of children who lose their basic right because not registered

Friday, 12 October 2012

Santo Domingo (Agenzia Fides) - Thousands of minors in the Republic of Santo Domingo do not have access to the study and other basic services simply because they are not registered in the census, because either immigrants or because their parents find it difficult to register them. The home for girls Doña Chucha, funded with the aid of the Spanish NGO Mensajeros de la Paz, is home to 90 girls who are followed in their studies. They all come from families who live in neighborhoods farther away, in situations at risk of exclusion, with drug problems at home or parents who have started to steal to feed their children. According to a UNICEF report, more than 55% of the population between 0 and 12 years of age and 49% of those aged between 13 and 18 are in the range of poverty. The lack of a register of births, which implies the right of every person to have a name and a nationality concerns about 22% of children under 5 years of age and 6.1% of those between 10 and 14 years of age. Many of the children who come to the center are immigrants who have fled from the earthquake in Haiti, or Creole of the Republic of Santo Domingo that have not been registered by the parents because illiterate, or simply uninterested, or for administrative or economic difficulties encountered while trying to carry out the legal process . Often they are blackmailed by unscrupulous officials of the offices that also ask them for money. In the country the law states that parents or a guardian must register the child within 60 days after birth, after which one can always rely on "belated statements," more complex procedure that requires additional requirements and costs that families with poor resources cannot afford. Outside the capital Santo Domingo there is another school, Adonai, which houses around 500 children and increases each day. (AP) (Agenzia Fides 12/10/2012)


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