Uganda celebrated International Women’s Day on 8 March 2025 under the national theme, “Empowering Women through Innovative Approaches to Social Protection; a Prerequisite for Inclusive and Sustainable Development”. This theme reminds us of the vulnerabilities and inequalities women continue to face in social protection, legal identity, development, and access to health and socioeconomic services, despite the affirmative interventions and women-focused reproductive health policies implemented over the years.
Civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) – the registration and management of records regarding births, deaths, marriages, and divorces – are critical for women to access social protection programs, including property inheritance. Regarding public services, birth registration ensures children can access healthcare, education, and other civil rights and opportunities. In particular, marriage and death registration protect women’s rights to inheritance and social benefits, where women have oftentimes been the losers.
Many women in Uganda are single mothers struggling to raise children. Only a robust CRVS system can empower them with a legal identity, to enable them to access financial services, including the Government’s Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Program (UWEP) and the “Uganda Growth Fund” (GROW). Registration documents, especially the National Identity Card, are critical to access the bank-channeled GROW Fund. GROW – “Generating Growth Opportunities and Productivity for Women Enterprises – supports women-owned businesses with UGX4-200 million. This amount can transform a woman’s fortunes – and through her, the fortunes of her family and community.
Unfortunately, women – many of whom live in hard-to-reach rural, remote areas – have not been adequately supported by the country’s CRVS system, which continues to suffer from under-funding and inefficiencies.
A robust CRVS system should be able to generate, maintain, and avail gender-disaggregated data, which is essential for designing inclusive policies, laws, and programs that address women’s issues, including maternal health, gender-based violence, and economic participation.
Even for informal jobs that young women are flocking to the Middle East for, they must have National Identity Cards and a National Passport to go through the necessary process – documents generated through the national CRVS system.
As another cycle of political general elections dawns and as we continue to find sustainable solutions to challenges that are unique to women and girls, including gender-based violence, let us make the national theme of the 2025 International Women’s Day work for women and girls this year. Opportunities, such as digital technology and legal reforms can make the national CRVS system better claim their health and socioeconomic rights, including social protection, legal identity, and inclusive development.
#IWD2025
