“A woman does not have permanent address. I mean, it changes with her marital status. Issuing birth certificate to children without the father´s address is thus impossible,” Joshi said. [break]
According to Joshi, it is natural for a VDC secretary to ask a woman, who is demanding a birth certificate for her child, about the address of her husband. "If she is married and has a kid, no wonder she must also have a husband who belongs to somewhere. She should go there and try for the certificate,” he explained.
Radha Karki (name changed) is a manual labor and has been living in a one-room rented accommodation in Tinthana VDC since 5 years. Originally, from Sindhupalchowk, the 24-year-old gave birth to a daughter when she was 21 and a son one year later. Soon after the father, who worked as a bus conductor, left for India and have not come back since.
“He abruptly stopped calling me. And I do not have his phone number,” said Karki. “I know that it is important to obtain birth certificate for children but I don´t know how. I tried but gave up after the VDC staffs told me that first I need to fill the details about my husband and his family in a form first.”
When Karki had approached the VDC for the purpose, Ram Dutta Chaulagain was the VDC secretary who turned down her request. Joshi has replaced him, but this made no difference to Karki.
“I am ready to provide the certificate to people like Karki. But if any problem regarding this arises tomorrow, who will be responsible?” asked Joshi.
“A friend of mine was sacked for handling similar case. He is now fighting the case at the appellate court,” Joshi narrated.
Madhav Khatiwada, VDC secretary at Mahadevsthan, Thankot, found Joshi´s logic quite appealing.
He said that despite amendments in the events registrations (birth, death and migration), patriarchal values have not changed and doing anything that challenges those values might put registrars in trouble at any point of time.
“I personally feel that birth and death registration need to be simplified. A child born to a Nepali woman should get the certificate without any hassle. But there are several contradictory clauses that make us wary of issuing such certificates so simply. The first thing is we need to fill the father´s and grandfather´s citizenship number,” Khatiwada said.
Human right activist and advocate Meera Dhungana labels the practice as the height of gender discrimination. She informs that the law has not deprived children of Nepali mothers of birth certificates irrespective the nationality or identity of their father.
“But why women suffer is because the government has not communicated the change of rules to concerned officials in a proper manner. The VDC officials should be given clear instructions that they need to issue birth certificates to children if a Nepali mother wants it.”
Amid this, Dinesh Thapaliya, spokesperson at the local development ministry, reiterates that receiving birth certificate is the basic right of anyone born in the country, let alone whose mother has been seeking it.
“We encourage birth registration. Details of the parents are of course sought in the forms, but if any mother cannot provide it, the VDC official should write ´father´s citizenship not available´. The bottom line is mothers cannot be denied birth registration of their kids at any cost. We have taken the issue seriously and will do the needful to make the process easier,” Thapalia said. Thapaliya was merely repeating what he had told Republica 8 months ago.
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