Register every child to protect them from traffickers!

Each year, millions of children “disappear” across the world – in India for instance, between 300,000 and 600,000 children are reported missing every year. Many are never found again.

Some of these missing children are victims to trafficking. Estimates suggest that each year, between one and two million children fall into traffickers’ hands. Children can be trafficked for many different reasons, ranging from forced labour to sexual exploitation and recruitment into armed forces as child soldiers. Sometimes, abductors take advantage of unsuspecting children or even parents who genuinely believe their promises of high paid jobs or better education in another region or country.

Unregistered children are at greater risk of being trafficked

In many situations, when their child disappears parents are helpless and with good reason. How could you expect to find children with no identity? Each year 51 million children or one in three across the world go unregistered. It means that they have no legal existence and therefore no rights as citizens. Because the authorities including the police don’t know that they exist, no one can claim them back. In India for instance, trafficked girls from Bangladesh and Nepal who had been rescued from brothels languished in institutions for months because no one could prove where they came from.

Plan believes that registering children reduces their vulnerability to human rights violations. Birth registration can act as a prevention tool. Many unregistered children are denied access to education and healthcare, which makes them even more vulnerable to exploitation, abduction and trafficking. It is easier for traffickers to falsify their identity and age and smuggle them across borders. Birth registration can also contribute to the prosecution of perpetrators by proving a child’s age in courts.

About Universal Birth Registration

Plan’s Universal Birth Registration campaign has already registered tens of millions of children and has been a crucial part of combating sex trafficking. Birth registration can be relatively inexpensive, yet the impact can be great, especially for marginalised children who are the most at risk of being trafficked.