The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned today that the more than 70,000 Liberian children whose births were not recorded during the Ebola outbreak may be unable to access basic health and social services, obtain identity documents, and risk the danger of being trafficked or illegally adopted.
“No child should suffer the indignity, or not have protection from a state or other entities, and be unable to access basic services that are every child’s right just because of a lack of a registered identity,” Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s Representative in Liberia, said in a press release.
“We cannot, and should never let that happen,” Mr. Yett said in Monrovia, the Liberian capital.
UNICEF said that birth registrations in 2014 and 2015 had dropped sharply from pre-Ebola levels (…)