The Ministry of Labor and Social Protection convened a sitting on Monday to discuss the investigation about undocumented children carried out by the Center for Investigative Journalism. The representatives of several public institutions tried to explain the large discrepancy that investigative journalists revealed between the number of children born alive and the number of birth certificates issued by the state authorities.

Representatives of the institutions responsible for keeping records of people within the Public Services Agency, the National Bureau of Statistics, the Ministry of Health and the National Agency for Public Health brought several arguments that would explain that there are undocumented children, among them is the late registration of the child's birth by the parents, the registration of documents at different embassies, without these documents appearing in the registers of the public authorities of the Republic of Moldova, the use of different registration procedures, if the birth of the child is declared after a certain period of time, and others.

Minister Marcel Spatari requested that an in-depth research be carried out on this subject, in order to accurately establish the number of children who are not in the records of the authorities and the reasons why there is this difference between the data, so that each case can be approached individually, in order to avoid any risk to the child's safety.

Even if there are certain explanations and the real number of undocumented children would be one less, the problem is the lack of a unified system and an authority to monitor children from birth until they get proper documents. Even if the Moldovan legislation has very good provisions regarding child protection, the participants in the meeting admitted that, in a practical way, there are deficiencies in communication, institutional interconnection, due to which certain children at risk remain outside the social protection system and are at risk of being abused or even trafficked.

At the meeting at the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, it was proposed to make changes to the legislation, so that children born are registered in an electronic system right from the maternity ward, so that their fate can be monitored. It was discussed whether a child protection authority, as it exists in Romania, is necessary.

The Center for Investigative Journalism (CIJM) revealed in a journalistic investigation that there is a huge discrepancy between the number of live births and the number of birth certificates issued by the authorities in the last five years. This difference is over 22 thousand, which means that so many children would not have IDs, because the number of birth certificates issued each year is several thousand less than the number of children born in the Republic of Moldova. The journalistic investigation was published on the Anticoruptie.md portal on June 1, but authorities have not yet reacted publicly.

The CIJM requested from the Ministry of Health data on the number of live births in the last five years, 2017-2021, and from the Public Services Agency (ASP) - data on the number of birth certificates registered in the same period. General data were compared for each year.

For example, in 2017, according to the Ministry of Health, 37,011 children were born. In the same year, 34,285 birth certificates were issued. With 2,726 fewer documents than children born. Even if we admit that some of the children were registered the following year, the statistics for 2018 are even more desolate. That year, 35,027 children were born and 23,182 birth certificates were issued, the difference is exactly 11,845 (!).

In 2019, 32,894 children were born, and ASP issued 29,152 certificates, by 3,742 fewer documents than children born. In 2020, 31,215 children were born and 29,726 birth certificates were issued. The difference is 1,489. In 2021, 29,657 were born and 26,589 birth certificates were registered, the difference was 3,068 this year as well.

Therefore, if we add up all the figures that show the difference between the number of live births and the number of birth certificates issued by the Moldovan authorities, we get a number of 22,870. This would mean that more than 22,000 children born in the last five years do not have identity documents.