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Jan. 1 has become the birthday for Afghans who don't know when they were born
- jdmitch 13y agoIn a lot of the world Jan. 1 is everyone's birthday. Or Dec. 31 (The article cites Somalia, Sudan and Vietnam as other examples, but I have been to several other countries where the majority of the rural population has the same issue). It's not really a big deal - some people just don't care what the exact date was that they were born. It seems a bit culturally imperialistic to impose that norm on a lot of issues (aid distribution, human rights, passport standards, etc.) This is the quote cited from the UN report, which makes a case for the importance of registration pragmatically: >“Birth registration is instrumental in safeguarding other human rights because it provides the official ‘proof’ of a child’s existence,” ... but it begs the question for any parent in this situation: "Why do I need proof, my child is right here in front of me?!"
- eruditely 13y agoAre you even trying with the last paragraph? They need to know how to verify your child's existence to make sure you aren't crazy and when to send him to school among many things?
- thaumasiotes 13y agoWell, neither of those things represents a benefit to the parent... registration appears to be something governments like in order to make things easier for themselves. Why is it surprising that parents wouldn't care?
- byoung2 13y agoYour child has been kidnapped and brainwashwd, and the kidnappers claim the he his their son. I challenge you to prove otherwise. A birth certificate would come in handy.
- stefan_kendall 13y agoWhat stops someone from stealing my cats out of my apartment? 1.) Most people don't want to. And if they did get stolen, how would I prove they were mine? I have no registered documentation of the cats! Except for photos, and dozens of individuals who have seen me with the cats. You don't need a government certificate to bring a civil or criminal case against someone.
- byoung2 13y agoWhat stops someone from stealing my cats out of my apartment? 1.) Most people don't want to. Cats are plentiful...I can get one anywhere. Children, on the other hand, are hard to come by. Ask anyone who paid $20k for fertility treatments and still couldn't have a child. More nefarious types can't steal your cats and make them soldiers, or sell them as sex slaves like they can your children.
- scotty79 13y agoTo prove anything it should contain (securely) timestamped DNA scan.
- shiven 13y agoA birth certificate would come in handy. As would a DNA based paternity test. No need for government issued papers.
- byoung2 13y agoAs would a DNA based paternity test. No need for government issued papers A country that can't even issue birth certificates can do DNA testing?
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoFedEx services a large area.
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- rmc 13y agoHence why they hack it, and say "We'll give you money if your child is 'registered'".
- rjzzleep 13y agoi was working in louisiana for a while, a friend told me that they have exactly one ancient printer that is capable of printing birth certificates. nobody dares to touch it, because _if_ for whatever reason that printer breaks, kids can no longer be officially born in the state of louisiana.
- pjc50 13y agoIt is, like most forms of official identity, primarily for the benefit of official databases and categorisation systems. But not entirely: Birth registration and death registration are a matched pair that enable the tracking and prevention of certain kinds of abuse. In Victorian England, way before the availability of contraception or abortion, there was "baby farming". This involved a oneoff payment to send an unwanted infant to be "looked after" with no further contact. The baby farms had very high mortality rates, which everyone turned a blind eye to. This was eventually stamped out. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Dyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Dyer The most famous example of "why do I care about my birth certificate" is of course Barack Obama. Some people were determined to make it very important.
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoWhich other nations require native birth for position?
- edanm 13y agoThis is very common. In Israel, a lot of people immigrated here from e.g. Iraq, and they don't know their birthday. I guess in some cultures birthdays just weren't remembered (at least in the past, maybe that's changing?).
- yen223 13y agoI'd imagine that turmoil is major factor for the deficiencies in record-keeping. My father's official birthday is a few months after his actual birthday, because he was born right in the middle of the Japanese occupation of our country. Couldn't get a birth certificate until after WW2 had ended.
- Kiro 13y agoIn Sweden this has caused issues with uniqueness of the social security number for immigrants.
- pizza 13y agoHah, here I was thinking the title referred to account sign-up pages, where Afghanistan would be the default country and January 1st the default date. Programmer's first reaction, haha...
- oleganza 13y agoMy exact reaction too! :-)
- StringyBob 13y agoSame here. The twist for a programmer is that if you run a system and were to 'ignore' all Jan 1st Afghan registrations as people who have filled in junk data on registration forms, you would be also potentially be skipping over lots of real users!
- swalberg 13y agoMy exact thoughts. And the follow up article, "Why do I have so many from zip code 90210?"
- rmc 13y agoSeems like someone needs to do a "Falsehoods programmers believe about birthday" ;) It's not suprising really. Many people don't track this when they don't need to. Many people used to not track how old they were (i.e. what year they were born in), because it didn't matter. The UK brought in an old aged pension for everyone about 100 years ago. But you had to be over a certain age. So people suddenly found reason for figuring out how old they were. There had been censuses in the UK for ~50 years before that, but the age didn't matter. You could find people who only "aged" 5 years between 1901 and 1911 ;). It's messy stuff like that that can make genology difficult.
- pearjuice 13y ago>but since the American invasion, it’s become a new kind of holiday — a de facto birthday for thousands of Afghans who don’t know when they were born Speaking about cultural and capitalist propaganda. In a lot of countries (due to religious motives) birthdays are not celebrated. In fact, true Christianity is also very anti-birthday but capitalism and other mass-spending arguments basically altered those beliefs for their own good.
- aestra 13y agoTrue Christianity? Let's not invoke the no true Scotsman fallacy here. Yes it is true that some Christians at some times thought celebrating birthdays was wrong. Notably the Puritans and Quakers and currently the Jehovah's witnesses. These groups also don't celebrate Christmas. There's also many Christians who allow the celebration of birthdays and never had a problem with it as far as I can tell. It wasn't always capitalism and mass spending just cultural exchange. Charles Dickens has a lot to do with our modern Christmas for example.
- heyadayo 13y agoIn South Korea, it is literally everyone's birthday on January 1st. http://voices.yahoo.com/korean-age-birthdays-5317511.html http://voices.yahoo.com/korean-age-birthdays-5317511.html
- jemeshsu 13y agoFor Chinese, it is on seventh day of the lunar new year. Its called “renri” (人日), literally "human" "day". On this day, for southeast asia Chinese, you eat the Yusheng (鱼生) raw fish salad dish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusheng http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusheng. You can eat yusheng any days during Chinese New Year, just that it is more prosperous to eat it on human day.
- aestra 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_age_reckoning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_age_reckoning Everyone is born 1 year old too.
- ExpiredLink 13y agoI work for a governmental organization that in case of a missing birth date records only the year and sets month and day to 0 (e.g. 1972-00-00). This, at first sight, reasonable workaround from a user's point of view has some unanticipated ramifications when you search for a person. Those month- and day-less are born on each day of a year ...
- moha114aw 13y agoIn Ethiopia, most of the rural born population (more than 80%) don't know their exact date of birth. So, what their parents usually do is try to find some historical reference that occurred during their childrens' birthday and approximate it to some specific date.
- drdeadringer 13y agoI know a planet where every year is "Year One"...
- pseingatl 13y agoRoman calendar? I think the reporter means, "Gregorian" calendar. That's the calendar used in the U.S. and by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and by everyone else in the Middle East when they wish to make a distinction from the hejira calendar. Although maybe a legacy of the Russian occupation is the use of the Julian calendar? Who knows? It's sloppy reporting. Also, Chinese people have individual birthdays. However, black children born in many counties of northern Florida before 1930 were not given birth certificates.
- abrowne 13y agoMaybe they got "Roman" from Roman alphabet? – another culture import of the Western forces.
- darkhorn 13y agoIt was same in Turkey, it has changed. Now they register it as it as July 1.
- pinaceae 13y agoThis had an adverse affect on the Austrian SSN number scheme. The number was your birthday plus 4 digits. In a country with less than 8million people and a functioning healthcare system this works nicely, generates a unique identifier. a lot of software was built around this premise, a government issued, unique identifier. migration brought in people from turkey, which a while ago was one of the countries handing out estimated birthdays. whenever a gov official visited a town, all new babies were registered and got a birthday at the first of the month. boom. the SSN in Austria can no longer be considered unique, but still a lot of newbies fall into this trap. the butterfly effect.