CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS
Citizenship is the right of a person to belong to a specific country, and every citizen has the right to have rights. BRAVEHEART committed to elaborate on equal and just access to legal identity in the communities.
According to the 2014 Census data, out of 51 million people in the population, more than 11 million people (aged above 10 years) are found undocumented. Despite issuing the Citizenship Scrutiny Card (the current ID card) in 1985, several people are still left unidentified. Regarding the unidentified people, they are unaware of the importance of the civil documents and have no prior knowledge of the application process. Furthermore, the 1982 Citizenship Law and Rules are quite rigid, and applicants need many supporting documents. The additional findings are poor Burmese language, transportation barriers, financial problems, and so on.
Braveheart’s innovative access to legal identity programs targeted towards reducing undocumented people and everyone know their citizenship rights people are;
Raising Awareness
Client Facilitation
Community Education
Online Consultation
Raising Awareness
The paralegal model is determined by the high-level outcome of Braveheart’s programs. Our paralegals are well-trained in the 1982 Citizenship Law and promote access to legal identity in their networks, which are our main target areas in Eastern Shan State (Kengtung Township) and Western Yangon.
(Hlaingtharyar and Htantabin Township). From 2017 to 2023, we reached 19,019 people individually to raise awareness about legal identity.
Client Facilitation
Braveheart’s facilitation services play an important role in the overall effort to legally empower the people and give them a secure consultation on the application process. The paralegals use strategic approaches to make door-to-door visits to the clients. They educate them about the importance of civil documents, encourage them to apply, and assist the clients in the application process. Sometimes they have to help the clients collect the supporting documents. Within 7 years, we empowered 11,156 people to step into the application process.
Community Education
Community education is vital for raising awareness, and we hope that together we can empower and equip those communities to identify their citizenship rights. Once a person is aware and educated, we find that she or he creates a ripple effect throughout her or his community. Hence, we share our experience with other CSOs, partners, and stakeholders through ToT on Citizenship Education. Our own experiences with clients illustrate a training manual that was published and shared at ToT sessions across the country.
Online Consultation
Aiming to raise awareness and client facilitation for all people, regardless of their location, we created the Facebook page “Braveheart Foundation”. Braveheart’s online consultation initiative provides several people with relevant information on the application process for civil documents.
Research & Analysis
Through the various projects and activities Braveheart has had and implemented, we have done research projects to get more quantitative and qualitative information on undocumented people in Myanmar. With our data and evaluating experts’ consultancy and supervision, we could collect accurate data and put that data into a secure database for further systematic analysis. Our diverse research methodologies, including surveys, observations, and demographic research, help us better understand the common barriers to the application process and how being without a legal identity impacts their social, economic, and livelihood sectors. We then use this research to inform our respective stakeholders and relevant CSOs.
