Challenges
Birth registration: a passport to opportunity
Imagine you are an unregistered child. If you are lucky, you have been immunised, receive health care and go to school.
But, as you grow older, not having a birth certificate will make things increasingly difficult:
- You won’t be able to sit for national exams because you don’t have an official school enrolment number.
- You won’t be able to get a social security number to confirm that you are eligible to work.
- You won’t be able to get a passport so that you can travel.
This is the reality for millions of people around the world. Estimates suggest that over 51million babies are not registered at birth. In South Asia, the region with the most unregistered children, 64%of births are not recorded. In sub-Saharan Africa, the figure is 63%. Even in industrialised countries, two per cent of newborns are not registered.
What are the obstacles?
At local level they are:
- lack of awareness and motivation
- fear of discrimination and persecution
- incompatibility of birth registration with local realities
- lack of resources.
At national level they are:
- lack of political will
- lack of resources
- legislative barriers.
At international level these are:
- lack of recognition, support and priority
- lack of implementation and action.
"Many organisations visit to help us, but they ask for assessments about how big our population is and its different age groups, and we can’t answer because the Supreme Electoral Council’s census is insufficient. We know that we have a high number of unregistered people."
- Elsa Cristina Palm, Registrar of Puerto Morazan, Nicaragua
