
Jan. 1 has become the birthday for Afghans who don't know when they were born - kumarski
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2022570799_afghanbirthdaysxml.html
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jdmitch
In a lot of the world Jan. 1 is everyone's birthday. Or Dec. 31 (The article
cites Somalia, Sudan and Vietnam as other examples, but I have been to several
other countries where the majority of the rural population has the same
issue). It's not really a big deal - some people just don't care what the
exact date was that they were born. It seems a bit culturally imperialistic to
impose that norm on a lot of issues (aid distribution, human rights, passport
standards, etc.)

This is the quote cited from the UN report, which makes a case for the
importance of registration pragmatically:

 _> “Birth registration is instrumental in safeguarding other human rights
because it provides the official ‘proof’ of a child’s existence,”_

... but it begs the question for any parent in this situation: "Why do I need
proof, my child is right here in front of me?!"

~~~
pjc50
It is, like most forms of official identity, primarily for the benefit of
official databases and categorisation systems. But not entirely:

Birth registration and death registration are a matched pair that enable the
tracking and prevention of certain kinds of abuse. In Victorian England, way
before the availability of contraception or abortion, there was "baby
farming". This involved a oneoff payment to send an unwanted infant to be
"looked after" with no further contact. The baby farms had very high mortality
rates, which everyone turned a blind eye to. This was eventually stamped out.
See e.g.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Dyer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Dyer)

The most famous example of "why do I care about my birth certificate" is of
course Barack Obama. Some people were determined to make it very important.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
Which other nations require native birth for position?

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pizza
Hah, here I was thinking the title referred to account sign-up pages, where
Afghanistan would be the default country and January 1st the default date.
Programmer's first reaction, haha...

~~~
StringyBob
Same here. The twist for a programmer is that if you run a system and were to
'ignore' all Jan 1st Afghan registrations as people who have filled in junk
data on registration forms, you would be also potentially be skipping over
lots of real users!

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rmc
Seems like someone needs to do a "Falsehoods programmers believe about
birthday" ;)

It's not suprising really. Many people don't track this when they don't need
to. Many people used to not track how old they were (i.e. what year they were
born in), because it didn't matter.

The UK brought in an old aged pension for everyone about 100 years ago. But
you had to be over a certain age. So people suddenly found reason for figuring
out how old they were. There had been censuses in the UK for ~50 years before
that, but the age didn't matter. You could find people who only "aged" 5 years
between 1901 and 1911 ;). It's messy stuff like that that can make genology
difficult.

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pseingatl
Roman calendar? I think the reporter means, "Gregorian" calendar. That's the
calendar used in the U.S. and by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and by everyone
else in the Middle East when they wish to make a distinction from the hejira
calendar. Although maybe a legacy of the Russian occupation is the use of the
Julian calendar? Who knows? It's sloppy reporting.

Also, Chinese people have individual birthdays. However, black children born
in many counties of northern Florida before 1930 were not given birth
certificates.

~~~
abrowne
Maybe they got "Roman" from Roman alphabet? – another culture import of the
Western forces.

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pinaceae
This had an adverse affect on the Austrian SSN number scheme. The number was
your birthday plus 4 digits. In a country with less than 8million people and a
functioning healthcare system this works nicely, generates a unique
identifier. a lot of software was built around this premise, a government
issued, unique identifier.

migration brought in people from turkey, which a while ago was one of the
countries handing out estimated birthdays. whenever a gov official visited a
town, all new babies were registered and got a birthday at the first of the
month.

boom.

the SSN in Austria can no longer be considered unique, but still a lot of
newbies fall into this trap.

the butterfly effect.

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heyadayo
In South Korea, it is literally everyone's birthday on January 1st.

[http://voices.yahoo.com/korean-age-
birthdays-5317511.html](http://voices.yahoo.com/korean-age-
birthdays-5317511.html)

~~~
jemeshsu
For Chinese, it is on seventh day of the lunar new year. Its called “renri”
(人日), literally "human" "day". On this day, for southeast asia Chinese, you
eat the Yusheng (鱼生) raw fish salad dish
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusheng](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusheng).
You can eat yusheng any days during Chinese New Year, just that it is more
prosperous to eat it on human day.

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Kiro
In Sweden this has caused issues with uniqueness of the social security number
for immigrants.

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edanm
This is very common.

In Israel, a lot of people immigrated here from e.g. Iraq, and they don't know
their birthday. I guess in some cultures birthdays just weren't remembered (at
least in the past, maybe that's changing?).

~~~
yen223
I'd imagine that turmoil is major factor for the deficiencies in record-
keeping.

My father's official birthday is a few months after his actual birthday,
because he was born right in the middle of the Japanese occupation of our
country. Couldn't get a birth certificate until after WW2 had ended.

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moha114aw
In Ethiopia, most of the rural born population (more than 80%) don't know
their exact date of birth. So, what their parents usually do is try to find
some historical reference that occurred during their childrens' birthday and
approximate it to some specific date.

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pearjuice
>but since the American invasion, it’s become a new kind of holiday — a de
facto birthday for thousands of Afghans who don’t know when they were born

Speaking about cultural and capitalist propaganda. In a lot of countries (due
to religious motives) birthdays are not celebrated. In fact, true Christianity
is also very anti-birthday but capitalism and other mass-spending arguments
basically altered those beliefs for their own good.

~~~
aestra
True Christianity? Let's not invoke the no true Scotsman fallacy here. Yes it
is true that some Christians at some times thought celebrating birthdays was
wrong. Notably the Puritans and Quakers and currently the Jehovah's witnesses.
These groups also don't celebrate Christmas. There's also many Christians who
allow the celebration of birthdays and never had a problem with it as far as I
can tell. It wasn't always capitalism and mass spending just cultural
exchange. Charles Dickens has a lot to do with our modern Christmas for
example.

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ExpiredLink
I work for a governmental organization that in case of a missing birth date
records only the year and sets month and day to 0 (e.g. 1972-00-00). This, at
first sight, reasonable workaround from a user's point of view has some
unanticipated ramifications when you search for a person. Those month- and
day-less are born on each day of a year ...

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darkhorn
It was same in Turkey, it has changed. Now they register it as it as July 1.

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drdeadringer
I know a planet where every year is "Year One"...

