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“I didn’t exist”: Ending the Ordeal of Haiti’s Undocumented
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In Haiti, millions of people live with no official identification – and therefore no legal existence. Their administrative invisibility complicates every aspect of their daily lives, from access to essential services to civic participation. It also fuels discrimination. The stories of Paula and Robert highlight the ordeal of the “undocumented” and the importance of initiatives like the Poto Mitan project, which aim to give these forgotten citizens a legal identity.
“What’s your name?” This apparently banal question has caused Paula Pierre years of anxiety, especially when followed by a request for official documents. Lacking a birth certificate for most of her life, she couldn't prove this was her real name. In a sense, she did not legally exist.
Paula Pierre was born in Haiti's countryside, hours from the nearest civil registry office. For her parents, a farmer and stay-at-home mom, the distance and cost of registration would have been a futile expense. So, caught up in their difficult daily lives, her parents never registered her birth.
The key to essential services
The decision would cost Paula dear. With no ID to show, she had trouble doing routine things. In 2020, when the public authorities made it mandatory to show ID to have access to a SIM card, the 30-year-old woman had to ask a friend to register her phone number in her name. It was the same when she tried to claim money her aunt sent her from the US. She had to call another friend for help when trying to open a bank account.
Paula’s case is far from unique. More than 40% of people in Haiti lack have no ID and according to the World Bank, in 2022 some 850 million people around the world had no official identification.
More than half of them are children whose births weren’t registered, and women are less likely to have ID than men. “Women, who are already victims of multiple forms of inequality compared to men, are more exposed to discrimination and violations when they are deprived of an official ID,” says Shedline Aurélien, a project officer at AFD’s Port-au-Prince Office.
Robert Jean, an orphan raised by his godmother and whose birth certificate was lost at birth, recently received a new birth certificate free of charge, as well as an ID number, thanks to the Poto Mitan project. Now able to exercise his rights, Robert will be on the next electoral roll, and at 71-years-old, he will be able to vote for the first time.
Bolstering Haiti's bureaucracy and public administration
This new beginning was made possible by the support he received from the Citizen Protection Office (OPC) of Haiti through Poto Mitan. Managed by Expertise France and financed by AFD, this project aims to help administrations provide civil registry, identity and identification services, in an effort to ensure that all regions have access to the same services.
The project “helps improve access to services by simplifying procedures and clarifying each step of the process,” says Jude Saint-Natus, task team leader for Expertise France.
Saint-Natus commends the political and technical leadership of the public institutions as they rolled out the project, especially in decentralizing services. “Poto Mitan doesn’t replace the State, it supports it,” he says.
Everyone has a right to an official identity, says Shedline Aurélien. “It’s essential for the Haitian State to be robust enough to provide services,” particularly those allowing men and women to identify themselves and be in official records, from the school system to health services. “It will give people the feeling that they exist as full human beings.”