What’s in a birthday? Plenty, if you’re undocumented

 

From Dina Fuad

In the film “The Bourne Identity”, a man suffering from total amnesia, having been found adrift at sea, attempts to discover his identity. The road he travels is long and treacherous and it is indeed one that is not exclusive to the silver screen.

Undoubtedly, fiction is not the only place where people find themselves in a world without birthdays and where random names and unsubstantiated evidence are produced as a matter of survival. It is a situation that affects refugees and undocumented migrants all around the world.

No matter where they land, asylum seekers would commonly find themselves in deep water, crying out to be rescued. But for many, without the legal identification papers to prove their names, dates of birth and places of origin, life could get complicated. It leads to deprivation, exclusion, marginalisation and, of course, further displacement.

With basic public services such as health and education being inaccessible to refugees, particularly in countries not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, their only recourse would be nonprofit organisations that try to fill the gaps with the limited resources they have. But even charitable organisations admit to being unable to give the right support and to facing challenges because of the absence of birth identity and other official documents.

But there is hope, thanks to medical intervention. The light at the end of the tunnel came many years ago through the application of the Dental Age Assessment method (DAA), which accords legally recognised birth dates to the scores of children and young adults living without official papers.

The DAA, according to the British Dental Journal, is the most reliable method of assessing the age of children and emerging adults. It is widely used by lawyers and immigration officers for processes involving international adoptions, for example, and in determining sentencing in criminal cases involving young adults.

DAA is achieved using the mathematical techniques of meta-analysis, which integrates the known ages from teeth at different tooth developmental stages.

This has certainly been one of the most significant contributions of the medical world towards supporting refugees and helping them build their futures. According to the Date of Birth Foundation (DOB), an organisation set up to promote and facilitate complete birth registration to ensure that children’s rights are appropriately handled following age disputes, more than a third of children in the world do not get their birth registered. However, the situation is being addressed through multi-agency work and there has been a steady increase in birth registration practices over the years.

For the fortunate ones who are finally handed the details of their birth, the implications are far-reaching. It means that the road ahead may be not as bumpy as anticipated, having been accorded the legitimacy they have been missing out for so long. For many paperless children, this development can immediately mean something as simple as a birthday celebration, experienced for the first time in their life.

Seventeen-year-old Romanar, a refugee child from Myanmar and a student at the Dignity for Children Foundation (DCF), is one of many who never knew his age, even though he was attending school. DCF is a non-governmental organisation based in Sentul, Kuala Lumpur, that provides holistic care and education for marginalised and urban poor children in Malaysia, and has been one of the beneficiaries of the community engagement programme of the International Medical University (IMU)

After living in Malaysia for six years, Romanar was eventually presented with a birth date in 2018, along with several schoolmates. This was made possible through the efforts of Dr Jayakumar Jayamaran, a former paediatric dentist at IMU. At the time, Jayakumar was involved in refugee outreach work, providing oral healthcare and treatment to marginalised groups through the activities of the Community Engagement Office.

Jayakumar decided to conduct the age assessment after initial engagements with refugee pupils at DCF on a regular oral healthcare visit. He undertook it in collaboration with Dr Phrabhakaran Nambiar, a forensic odontologist.

“While providing dental care, it became very obvious that we needed to help the children,” Jayakumar recalls. “Looking at their teeth, what they were telling us about their age just did not add up. We soon realised they were just making it up as they had no idea when they were born.

“There are many implications for children who have no proper birth certificates or any kind of documentation to prove their age. Everything – from the legal perspective to getting the right education or receiving any other state entitlements – is determined by your age.”

Jayakumar is also the founder of the DOB Foundation, based in Hong Kong. According to DOB, the lack of birth identity documents has resulted in falsified testimonials of age when children want to enrol in a school, work, appear in national level competitive exams and participate in age categorised sports and games tournaments.

The 2018 collaboration with DFC helped to identify the ages of 22 refugee children from Somalia, Bangladesh and Myanmar. The date of birth was estimated from the estimated mean dental age and the date of examination of the child. The age reports provided can be used as a reference to obtain legal documentation.

The project was completed in two months and, on April 26, 2018, the refugee children from DFC Foundation were invited to IMU to be presented their age reports. A birthday party ensued.

“It was a joyous occasion, a day to celebrate for these kids who had not known anything like this before,” Jayakumar said. “Having a date of birth is a fundamental right. It can determine the direction of your life.’

For Romanar, now 17, and the others from his school, the future may be a long way away from their daily classrooms, but this brought the promise of a better journey ahead.

Jayakumar is optimistic that such efforts can go a long way towards securing a better future for undocumented children.

“It’s a sustainable approach to supporting and building refugee communities,” he said. - FMT

Dina Fuad is an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.