OCNH Executive Director, Mr. Camille Occius
Port-au-Prince, 12 December 2025.- The Organisation of Citizens for a New Haiti (OCNH) calls for urgent reform of the civil registration system, considering that the current legal framework, dating from 1825, is incapable of responding to contemporary realities. In the face of massive loss of documents in natural disasters such as Hurricane Matthew, OCNH points out that thousands of people today live undocumented, at risk of statelessness.
During an interview granted to radio Magik 9 on Friday 12 December, the Executive Director of the OCNH, Mr. Camille Occius, called for an in-depth modernization of the Haitian civil registration system. He recalls that the Civil Code, which regulates the production of birth certificates, dates back to 1825, making the administrative system completely inadequate to meet current needs. For him, digitization and computerization are now a must.
The problem of birth certificates remains particularly sensitive in Haiti, where thousands of citizens still struggle to prove their legal existence. According to Mr. Occius, residents of the department of Greater Anse lost all their documents after Hurricane Matthew's passage, as the records were taken by water before they could be transferred to a safe place. This situation illustrates the structural fragility of the system.
In the Great South too, the destruction caused by Matthew left many families completely without official documents, without any possibility of reconstitution. The OCNH believes that these citizens are thus in a situation of extreme vulnerability, exposed to the risk of statelessness, due to the lack of effective mechanisms for rewriting their documents.
Camille Occius finally recalls that this year was a particularly difficult year for human rights organisations. Between continuing political crisis and rising insecurity, their ability to intervene has been considerably reduced. Hence, according to him, the urgent need to undertake a reform to secure civil status and protect the fundamental rights of Haitians.
W.A.
