UNICEF calls for free registration of births

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called for the free registration of all children at birth, noting that millions of babies go undocumented each year, automatically denying them an official identity, nationality and status.

In a report issued on Tuesday entitled "Birth Registration - Right from the Start", UNICEF said that unregistered children were denied "the membership card for society", guaranteeing them basic rights such as education, health care, a passport, a government job, the right to vote, and a marriage licence.

Furthermore, the absence of an official identity rendered children more vulnerable to abuses and exploitation in the form of early military recruitment in situations of armed conflict, child labour and early marriages.

"A birth certificate is one of the most important pieces of paper a person will ever own," Carol Bellamy, UNICEF executive director, said. "Unregistered children lack the most basic protection... and become a more attractive commodity to a child trafficker, illegal adoption rings, and others who seek to take advantage of their status."

The latest UNICEF data shows that between 40 percent and 69 percent of children are registered in Burundi, between 70 percent and 89 percent in the Central African Republic, and 66 percent in Rwanda.

In 1973, Rwanda's registration rate was at least 80 percent, but birth certificates that contained ethnic information were used "to deadly effect" by killers in the 1994 genocide, when about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred by Hutu extremists. By 1998, Rwanda ranked as one of the countries with the lowest levels of registration in the world, UNICEF said, but the latest figures gave "some grounds for optimism".

No data was available for either the Republic of Congo or the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), UNICEF reported. In the DRC, the registration system was "virtually nonexistent" following years of economic difficulty and civil war. Today's system in the DRC also involved a fee for registration and a penalty for late registration that, UNICEF said, was too expensive for the poor. Similarly in Rwanda there was a fee, that prevented almost 4 percent of parents from registering their children.

"It is crucial to have a universal, permanent and continuous system of registration and data collection, both to ensure the rights of children and, from a statistical perspective, to facilitate the planning and delivery of services to the population," UNICEF said.