If the birth has not been registered yet:

The man was already turning away. “That’s not my department. Next.”

Elena Vasquez never thought much about her birth certificate. It lived in a fireproof lockbox between her passport and her grandmother’s rosary. But when an electrical fire tore through her apartment building on a Tuesday night, the lockbox did its job against the flames—only to be crushed by a falling beam. The metal held. The paper inside turned to ash.

Her passport had expired two years ago. Her driver’s license was a melted lump of plastic. To the state, Elena Vasquez no longer existed.

stands for the Civil Registration System of Tanzania National . It is the official online portal managed by the Registration, Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency (RITA) under the Attorney General's Chambers of the United Republic of Tanzania.