CENTRAL ASIAN REGIONAL CONFERENCE ON BIRTH REGISTRATION AND PREVENTION OF STATELESSNESS WAS HELD IN NUR-SULTAN CITY

The second Regional Conference on the Right to Legal Identity and Prevention of Statelessness named “Leaving No One Behind at Birth” was held on September 5-6, 2019 in the city of Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan.

The Conference was organized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) jointly with the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Republic of Kazakhstan, in close coordination with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and UN Economic and Social Commission of Asia and Pacific (ESCAP).

The high-ranking representatives of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the Republic of Uzbekistan as well as the civil society organizations having practical experience in the area of preventing the statelessness participated to the Conference.  

On the part of Turkmenistan, the delegation headed by the Deputy Chief of the State Migration Service of Turkmenistan took part in the event.  The Turkmen delegation also included the representatives of the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Healthcare and Medical Industry, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Committee for Statistics of Turkmenistan.   

In the framework of the Conference, the participants discussed the progress and gaps in ensuring the registration of the births and the right to a nationality for all children born on the territory of the country, shared best practices on digitalization and synchronization of birth registration data for the prevention of statelessness, as well as spoke about the implementation of the recommendations on amending the national regulations pertaining to the registration of the births.         

The Turkmen side made three presentations on:

• The overview of the national system of registration of the civil status acts, registration of births and prevention of the statelessness;
• The overview of the achievements of the governments on midterm results of the “I Belong” campaign and indicative obligations of the states in the area of eliminating the statelessness by the year 2024;
• The issues of preparing the upcoming population census and modernizing its methodology, analysis of quantitative and qualitative indicators of persons lacking the documents and having unspecified citizenship, stateless persons, unregistered children and children without the citizenship.     

The event was organized in the context of the mid-point of the UNHCR ten-year campaign to End the Statelessness by 2024 and the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The conference contributes to the achievement of target 16.9 of the Sustainable Development Goals related to documenting people.