Living Like a Chicken
By Saint-Jean Lhérissaint
Burkina-Faso — I arrived in Burkina Faso in 2016. The first thing I noticed was how preoccupied people are with identity papers. People who could not get them were called names, not to make fun of them, but to signal how unacceptable it is that human beings are unable even to show proof of their name.
This is where the expression “living like a chicken” comes from.
So in this country named for integrity and honour (Burkina means upright in the Mossi language), some people are living in dishonour: many people — and primarily people in the deepest poverty — have nothing to prove their identity. There are many reasons for this, some linked directly with poverty, and others having to do with tradition and isolation.
For instance, there are children who are born in the home of a friend or in a centre that takes in young pregnant women. Tradition dictates that a young woman who becomes pregnant before marriage must leave her parents’ home. No family member must talk to her until she comes back and asks for forgiveness. Many of these children grow up without their family and are unable to get identity papers.
In other situations, families are unable to afford the birth registration fee. Or a father refuses to recognize his child, and the mother cannot register the birth alone. Or people are banned from their village, and their IDs are torn up or thrown away.
Also, in the past, every family had to pay taxes based on the number of people in the family. To pay less, some families did not declare the birth of one or two of their children. These taxes are no longer imposed; but some families who live in isolated areas still continue the practice.
In addition, parents who lack identification papers for themselves are unable to obtain them for their children; so the situation is handed down to the next generation.
Not being registered at birth would not be so serious if people were able to get identification papers easily. But obtaining papers is very complicated; it is a long, difficult process, impossible to do alone. Family members of the applicant have to be involved, and money is needed to pay the fees. So it is clear that for people who don’t know their relatives or don’t have the right to return to their village, they, their children, and their grandchildren are condemned never to have papers.
Leaving home without identification papers has recently become a big risk. After the terrorist attack in Ouagadougou on 15 January 2016, identity verification checks increased. Everyone, whether citizens or foreigners, must now always carry ID to avoid being arrested and paying a fine. A young man I know named Sayouba took a risk by travelling from the capital to Kaya, a city in the northeast. He was arrested at a checkpoint because, unlike his fellow passengers, he could not prove who he was. To be released, he would have had to pay 2,500 CFA francs (about $4.60 US) — but because he lacked the money, he had to spend twelve days in jail.
An ATD Fourth World activist said, ‘’When we don’t have identification papers, we live just like chickens. Even when people die, they need papers; without papers, we can’t bring the body back to their village to bury them.’’
A birth certificate is the first gift that we can give children. It proves that they exist. This gives them the right to access all the other things. We need to insist — at the registry offices, the courts, the city halls, the government departments, and all the other institutions of each country — that everyone must have a legal existence, starting with the first breath of life. This is the big door that must be opened so that nobody ever again has to live like a chicken.
