Consultancy for Review of the Law on Civil Registration (Birth Registration), Georgetown, Guyana - 50 Days (Nationals of Guyana Only)

Guyana has made significant strides in ensuring a right to an identity for all children. Birth certificates provide a child with a name, an identity, and a nationality. A birth certificate ensures that a child is not ‘stateless’.

Background:
Guyana has made significant strides in ensuring a right to an identity for all children.  Birth certificates provide a child with a name, an identity, and a nationality.  A birth certificate ensures that a child is not 'stateless'.  Birth certificates enable access to other rights, including the right to age-appropriate treatment for children in conflict with the law, the right to health care and education, and protection against child marriage, child labour, sexual exploitation, and trafficking. Birth registration can also facilitate the recovery and reintegration of children who become separated from their families and children who are victims of crime. The Convention on the Rights of the Child calls for the registration of all children immediately.    Accordingly, in 2013, in its Concluding Observations for Guyana, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, urged the State party to further improve measures for ensuring all children are able to have access to this, particularly in rural and hinterland areas.    

The Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2014 found that the births of 89% of children under five years of age were registered, with disparities in registration rates between the coastal and interior regions. For instance, children in Region 1 are less likely to have their births registered than other children (67%, compared to 83-93% in other regions), as are children in interior areas (81%), compared to those in coastal areas (91%).  To date, while a number of actions at different levels, e.g. ensuring access to services, coordination between Ministries and the strengthening of systems for birth registration is ongoing, there is a need to determine whether legislation/policy helps or hinders the process This review would also assist in advancing the need for any possible harmonization of the laws and take into consideration any future issues which may be needed to support birth registration efforts. 

Purpose of the study:
The purpose of this study is to provide an in-depth analytical assessment of all laws relating to birth registration.  This analytical review is intended to provide the knowledge needed for the strengthening of the enabling environment for birth registration, as part of the drive towards universal birth registration in Guyana.  Further, the review of the legal framework will complement programmes that are targeted towards strengthening access to birth registration services (including any work related to decentralization), social and cultural practices related to birth registration and investments in quality assurance systems for birth registration, for example, timely issuing of birth certificates and record keeping.

Scope and focus: 
The way in which the civil registration system is organized is very much a product of national legislation.  Both legislation and organizational structures and functions need to be developed over time in order to accommodate new developments. For example, the recent increased mobility of people puts a strain on systems that were designed for an age in which people hardly left their place of birth; and currently available technology may not have been foreseen when laws were developed. (UNICEF)

An analysis of the legal framework should include examination of the following:
1. Consistency with international civil registration law: whether national law adequately reflects provisions in international law
2. The history of civil registration legislation: when the latest change in the law took place and the frequency of legal changes over the past decades
3. Whether civil registration law and organizational structure and functions are modelled on systems introduced in colonial times, or are 'home-grown', and whether they are tuned to local sociocultural realities, e.g. naming practices.
4. The adequacy of legislation: whether legal changes constitute an adequate response to service bottlenecks
5. Consistency with related law: civil registration law may or may not be cross-referenced to related law, such as electoral law or privacy and possible inconsistencies in related law may provide a source of legal confusion.
6. Possibilities for decentralization: what is the scope or "space" for this.

The consultant(s)  will also expect to be guided by the Conventions of the Rights of Children (CRC) Implementation  Checklist  and the following table below and best practices for birth registration legislation (this must be covered in the report):
Checklist of legislation relevant to birth registration and what to look for
Type of legislation: What to look for
The Constitution (Nationality law and laws relating to children and families):
• How nationality is granted: from the birth having occurred within the country's territory (jus solis) or by birth to a parent who is a national (through the principle of jus sanguinis)
• Evidence of gender discrimination against women or men being able to pass their nationality to their children
• Whether births have to be registered before an identity card can be issued
• Do laws or practice relating to grant of nationality and registration of births discriminate between children born in and out of wedlock?

Electoral law: Are voters identified through civil registration?
Civil registration law:
• The regulation of semi-government organisations to which civil registration has been outsourced.
• The regulation of the role of government agencies involved in civil registration.
• The regulation of the use of technology to ensure that civil records maintain their probative value in court.
• Consistency with international law commitments, and international standards for civil registration.
• Related regulations (including cost, access, time periods)
• Late and delayed registration procedures
• Extent of information to be contained on the birth
• Certificate, noting in particular if any stigmatising information is noted
• Privacy, sharing of information for statistical purposes
• Regulations for obtaining a birth certificate

Laws on privacy, statistics and e-governance:
• Regulation of e-governance and the use of the confidential
• Information contained in the civil register
• Provision for sharing of data with national statistics office

Decentralisation law:
• How these impact on how civil registration is organized

Criminal law:
• Provisions against the counterfeiting of identity documents

Administrative law:
• Regulation of civil registrar liability
Social sector laws:
 • Requirements for birth certificates or birth registration to access services (e.g. income support, school leaving certificates, etc.).

Process and methodology:
For this consultancy, the consultant (individual or institutional) will lead in the review, in consultation with both the Ministry of the Presidency and the Department of Citizenship.  The phases for this exercise will be as follows:

Phase 1:   Inception report.
Work plan, data collection tools, list of required meetings- e.g. Ministry of the Presidency- Department of Citizenship, General Registrar's Office, Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Indigenous Peoples Affairs, Ministry of Legal Affairs and the Ministry of Social Protection. 

Phase 2- Data collection.
In this phase the following must be determined, through agreed method (e.g. Key informant interviews, focus group discussions and review of secondary data) and the review must take into consideration the areas under the section "Scope and Focus" of the consultancy.

Phase 3- Analysis, Report writing and dissemination
The consultant is expected to provide analytical report, based on the scope and focus of the study. 

The appropriate data analyses of both qualitative and quantitative data should be followed. 

A presentation of the final draft of the report will be made to the relevant stakeholders such as government counterparts, development partners, international and national NGOs.

The final report will be approved by Ministry of the Presidency- Department of Citizenship and UNIECF

"Ethical Considerations:
All standard ethical considerations and best practices in research applies. These include:
• a duty to provide full information to each potential respondent on the study including the purpose and potential benefits of the study and their rights.
• a duty of confidentiality towards informants and participants
• a duty to protect participants from harm, by not disclosing sensitive information
• a duty to treat participants as intelligent beings, able to make their own decisions on how the information they provide can be used, shared and made public (through informed consent)
• a duty to inform participants how information and data obtained will be used, processed, shared, disposed of, prior to obtaining consent

Stakeholder participation:
All agencies involved in this analysis will have access to both draft and final individual agency and general reports.

Study team composition and competencies:

The consultant will rely upon a core team with focal points the individual agencies and from UNICEF Guyana (Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist and the Child Protection Officer).  All focal points will be kept in the loop on all stages of the exercise.

Qualifications:
At a minimum, the consultant ( individual or institutional) must possess the following
• An advanced university degree (Master's) in Law and Demography.
• A minimum of five (5) years of relevant work experience with progressively higher levels of responsibility
• Excellent and proven analytical skills
• Excellent and proven English writing skills
• Relevant experience in related or similar assignments
• Excellent organizational and communication skills, ability to prioritize and work with minimum supervision

Duration of Contract: 50 Days

Accountabilities:
Final Products will be  jointly approved by partners and UNICEF

Procedures and Logistics:
The consultant is expected to work independently on his/her own.

Products/Deliverables:
Hard and soft copies of reports (including the statistical products) for both the combined and agency level analysis must be submitted to UNICEF.

Tasks 
(1) Inception Phase
      End Product/deliverables: Inception Report including work plan, methodology list of required meetings along with a desk/data review report
      Working days: 5
      Payment (%): 20%

 (2) Report Writing Phase
      End Product/deliverables: Draft report 
      Working days: 40
      Payment (%): 50%

(3) Final Report Writing Phase
      End Product/deliverables: Incorporation of key finding in report and submission of final report
      Working days: 5
      Payment (%): 30 %

Resource requirements:  
Fees will be negotiated at a daily rate, through Non-Grant resources and any necessary travel will be paid separately.

Conditions:
• The nature of the contract will be temporary.
• The consultant is expected to conduct all work independently of UNICEF, in accordance with United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) norms and standards and in line with the accountabilities section of this Terms of Reference (ToR).
• Prior to commencing the contract, the individual consultant will be required to sign a Health Statement for consultants/individual contractors, and to document that he/she has appropriate health insurance, if applicable.