 Lic. Daysi Flores and Lic. Dora Arauz - Daysi and Dora are lawyers for the legal advice programme Superemos has funded legal advice work for programme participants since 2003. Originally the project tended to work mostly with prisoners in the local penitentiary and low-income women participants in the education and training programmes run by Superemos.
Currently, the project continues to work with prisoners and low-income women but has also dedicated resources to helping families in the low-income barrios where Superemos provides healthcare, pre-school and training support. Many of the children in these families were never registered at birth and subsequently encounter administrative difficulties with school authorities or when they need to carry out other official business requiring formal identification. In Nicaragua if the parents do not register their new baby within 12 months they then have to pay for the relevant legal procedure - time consuming as well as a relatively costly process. Thus in low income areas it is not uncommon to come across children in their teens who are still without their birth certificate. Even where people have their birth certifiacte, difficulties with officialdom are also common resulting from errors in the original procedure. So far this year the programme has helped 53 children obtain their birth certificate. The programme's lawyers have also helped low income clients with:
Daysi and Dora are now discussing with representatives of local communities just north of Estelí - Las Cruces and Facundo Picado - extending to those communities the work in support of children without birth certificates.
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