affidavit, the local civil registrars establish an act substituting a declaration of birth. This act should indicate the baby’s gender and names assigned to the baby, as well as fixing an approximate birth date. The inclusion of such detailed instructions on how to register the births of found children in the 1964 Civil Status Law reflects the fact that the 1961 Nationality Code foresaw that such children were presumed to be born in Côte d’Ivoire and were entitled to acquire Ivorian nationality by origin. The Civil Status Law in its Chapters III and IV foresees strict rules for how civil registration offices are to maintain and handle the registers.114 A supplementary decree adopted in 1965115 establishes procedures to be followed with respect to civil status obligations of Ivorians abroad. 4.1.2. Practical challenges related to birth registration and civil status Although the procedures of the Civil Status Law might appear clear-cut on paper,116 there is great variance in how they are implemented in practice at the local level and there are many barriers to the proper functioning of the Ivorian civil status system. This helps explain why the current rate of birth registration among children under five years old in Côte d’Ivoire is 65%.117 This is nevertheless an improvement compared to the rate of birth registration of under 5 year-olds in 2006 (only 55%).118 The current rate of birth registration among children less than 18 years of age is 76.1%.119 The Ivorian civil status system suffered tremendously during the political and military crisis. All government authorities, including civil registration offices and courts, ceased to function in the central, northwestern, and western zones under rebel control120 and the archives of many civil registration offices were destroyed. Many individuals lost their birth certificates or jugement supplétif during the conflict as they were forced to flee, and proof of their birth registration was lost as civil registration offices were destroyed. In light of the complexity and scale of this phenomenon, the formal procedures for reconstituting registers foreseen in Articles 85-88 of the Civil Status Law have been adapted in practice to a procedure as follows. Persons whose births were declared in a lost or destroyed register must obtain a certificate from the local civil registration office attesting that following inquiries, the record is no longer there (certificat de recherches infructueuses); they must then go to the local court with this certificate and a request to reconstitute his or her birth record; courts can then issue a decision ordering the local civil registrar to transcribe the relevant facts in the local 114 For example, no blank spaces or pages are allowed in the registers; any corrections noted in the registers must be signed by the civil registrar; the registers are to be produced in duplicate copies and shared with the local courts at the end of each year, after which the court president must mark and sign each page after verification of compliance with legal requirements; correcting any errors, such as a simple misspelling of a name, requires an individual to obtain a court order authorizing correction. Articles 16, 17, 18, 21 and 28-81. 115 Décret No. 65-431 du 23 décembre 1965, Etat Civil des Ivoiriens à l’Etranger. 116 For example, one expert study on the civil status system concluded that problems with the Ivorian civil status system are not a result of the law but rather the lack of their harmonized implementation in practice. Louis Lohle-Tart and Henri Hovette, L’Etat Civil Normalisé par l’Application de la Loi, Unpublished draft dated 30 November 2007 (on file with author). Other commentators, however, recommend simplifying the civil status system. 117 Institut National de la Statistique (INS) and ICF International, Enquête Démographique et de Santé et à Indicateurs Multiples de Côte d’Ivoire 2011-2012, 2012, p. 365. 118 Id. 119 Id., p. 366. 120 Nevertheless, many local civil registration offices continued to function on an informal level. For example, in the absence of receiving official register books from the national printing office, some local authorities purchased school notebooks, charged nominal fees, and proceeded to “register” births or produce other civil status documents, failing to comply with any of the formal procedures set forth by law. 36