The Listin Diario newspaper reports that 20% of the children under 14 years of age in the mountain valley farming communities of Constanza have not been officially declared. Pro-Joven coordinator Karen Ovalles said that when carrying out a program to combat child labor they counted 3,895 undeclared children. She said that most of the children do not have birth certificates because of the lack of awareness of their parents that live in poverty. She said that they later researched other rural community and found a similar pattern among the rural poor, regardless of them being children of indigent Haitians or Dominicans. She now estimates a third of the children in rural areas do not have birth certificates. In the DR parents have a month to declare the children. If this is not done so during that time, the process requires many more steps. Public hospitals in major cities will issue birth certificates to children born there, which has resulted in a decline in the number of undocumented children in urban areas.
