FOR LACK OF BIRTH REGISTRATION - "I have lost many opportunities in attempt to rebuild my life", says Adélia Cossa.

FOR LACK OF BIRTH REGISTRATION

- "I have lost many opportunities in attempt to rebuild my life", says Adélia Cossa.

Natural and human disasters are part of the factors that force many Mozambican families to relocate from one place to another. And in this process, each time, the same families lose a piece of what constitutes their lives – floods, for example, causes many Mozambicans to lose everything, down to the last document that identifies them.

In 1983, as a 12-year-old adolescent girl, Adélia Luís Cossa was directly victimized by the civil war in Mozambique, when taken and kept in the woods by the military in conflict. After a few years, when she returned home, she discovered the sad news that her parents had lost their lives. Not finding the comfort she longed for, desperate, she immediately took refuge in neighboring South Africa.

Long years passed, and as the saying goes , " a good child always returns home". And from this maxim, Adélia Cossa's path was not far off - returning to Mozambique was an uncomfortable situation, because according to her it was embarrassing to be in a margin of irregularity, saying "I am a non-registered person. I do not have a birth certificate or a document that identifies me".

Now, just over 40 years old, Adélia Cossa feels the absence of any document that can identify her, "I have lost many opportunities in attempt to rebuild my life for lack of birth registration. I struggle every day to find a job to guarantee my self-support, I look for  so many other services like  opening a bank account but, always fail for lack of documentation", she explains.Adelia is a living example of those who pass through the same hardship and know very well the difficulties faced when living without birth registration.

Faced with the difficulties that Adélia goes through, all she wants is to be able to regain her citizen's status – “I also want to be registered, because without registration I will continue facing the same difficulties every day. Birth registration is the opening for everything in a person's life".

"I am an example of those who feel the lack of birth registration. For this reason, I encourage all, fathers, mothers and caregivers; please don´t leave for tomorrow a birth registration that you can do today. And it is from this birth registration that our children can have several benefits, contrary to what I live with today", warns Adélia Luís Cossa.