Committee approves draft law to include mother’s name on national IDs

Afghanistan’s Cabinet Committee on Legislation on Monday approved a bill to amend the Population Registration Act that would include a mother’s name on Tazkiras. 

Currently, Tazkiras – or National Identity Documents – only carry the name of a person’s father. 

According to a statement issued by Second Vice President Sarwar Danish’s office, the draft amendment was jointly drawn up by the Ministry of Justice and the National Bureau of Statistics and Information.

The Director of the National Statistics and Information Agency (NSIA) said that the proposed amendment of the Population Registration Act was aimed at integrating the Census Bureau into the NSIA.

The draft amendment will be put to the Cabinet and then to Parliament for approval.  

This move comes after women’s rights activists launched a campaign three years ago demanding a mother’s name should be included in official documents. 

In Afghanistan’s patriarchal society, the use of a woman’s name is regarded as inappropriate and even on birth certificates, there is no sign of the mother’s name. 

But the #WhereIsMyName campaign launched by a small group of women’s rights activists in 2017 has fought to bring women’s given names to official documents.

#WhereIsMyName aims to challenge attitudes that allow men to make all decisions and leave women invisible and powerless.

Even according to Afghan law a mother’s name should not be recorded on a birth certificate. 

The BBC recently reported that a source close to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said he had instructed the Afghanistan Central Civil Registration Authority (Accra) to look into the possibility of amending the country’s Population Registration Act to allow women to have their names on their children’s ID cards and birth certificates.

Fawzia Koofi, a former MP and women’s rights activist, told the BBC she welcomed the development, which “should have happened many years back”.

“The matter of including a woman’s name on the national ID card in Afghanistan is not a matter of women’s rights – it’s a legal right, a human right,” she said. “Any individual who exists in this world has to have an identity.”