Remote support to get your first birth certificate

A 2016 study in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health has estimated nearly one in five Aboriginal children in WA had unregistered births.

The Department of Justice is visiting remote communities in the State to assist people with registering their births as part of an outreach program.

A UNICEF report last year found that 12,600 children on average each year in Australia were missing out on an early childhood education because they did not have a birth certificate.

The Kimberley region is a particular area of the State the department is engaging with.

The department’s Marnie Giles and the Marra Worra Worra Aboriginal Corporation are actively trying to rectify the problem, working with local elders to gain trust and then to collaborate to ensure they are registered.

Ms Giles told the ABC the team conducted searches within databases and then with the Aboriginal History research service.

The ABC reported hundreds of people were unregistered in the Fitzroy Crossing area alone.

“We help all ages, babies, newborns, teenagers, a whole lot,” Ms Giles told the ABC.

“Particularly in the Kimberley; there are lots of unregistered people. That’s part of the reason we get out there as often as we can.”

Bunuba elder Patsy Ngalu Bedford spent the first 75 years of her life without a birth certificate.

She did not exist according to government records.

“I’m an elder and this year was my year of getting my birth certificate,” she told the ABC.

“We were told without a birth certificate, ‘You’re not a citizen of Australia’, so this just made by day.”