Facts and figures

Since the launch of our Universal Birth Registration campaign in February 2005, a great deal has been achieved:

• more than five million children have been registered
• over 90 per cent of Plan countries are involved in the campaign
• ten Plan offices have achieved changes to policy or legislation
• 21 offices are working towards policy change
• registration costs have been waived or reduced in 11 countries

View detailed campaign achievements opposite.

The current situation worldwide:

• Over 48 million births each year – 36 per cent of births worldwide – are not registered. According to UNICEF, the regional breakdown of unregistered births is as follows:
  

  South Asia	63%
  Sub-Saharan Africa	55%
  CEE/CIS & Baltic States	23%
  East Asia/Pacific	19%
  Middle East/North Africa	16%
  Latin America/Caribbean	15%
  Industrialised countries	2%

  
  
  
• It is difficult for unregistered children to prove their legal identity.
  
  
• Unknown numbers of children orphaned by AIDS are being denied their right to inherit parental property because they do not have a birth certificate providing legal proof of their identity and family ties.
  
  
• In some countries around the world, a child without proof of citizenship will be denied access to vaccination programmes.
  
  
• In Bangladesh, marriage of a child under 18 is prohibited by law. However, a mere declaration regarding the age of the bride is enough for marriage registration. The incidence of early marriage could be reduced if all marriage registrars asked for birth certificates and proof of age.
  
  
• The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that around 246 million children are currently involved in child labour worldwide. Of these, 179 million – or one in every eight children worldwide - are exposed to the worst forms of child labour, which endanger their physical, mental or moral well-being. Birth registration can play an important role in combating child labour. Establishing a legal minimum age for work is clearly an important first step but, without an effective birth registration system to back it up, it is difficult for government agencies acting to eliminate such practices by confirming the age of the children concerned.
  
  
• In many countries, sexual relations with a girl under 16, with or without her consent, are regarded as rape. Yet, without a birth certificate to confirm a girl's age and to prove she is underage, it is hard to obtain a conviction.
  
  
• Research carried out for Plan Nepal uncovered a situation where police were unwilling to trace a girl known to have been trafficked across the border to a brothel in India because she had no birth certificate or means of identification. This meant that there was no proof of her age, nationality or even her existence. This is great cause for concern given that there are currently an estimated 200,000 women and girls missing from Nepal, believed to have been trafficked to India.
  
  
• A Plan commissioned survey of children in rural schools in Ghana found that many children – even literate ones – freely admitted that they did not know their age. 80 per cent of those who did give their age were found to be incorrect when their answer was compared to the date of birth given in the school register (which also tended to be hugely incomplete). In the case of one boy who gave his age as 10 years old it emerged, after lengthy investigation, that he was actually 17 years old.
  
  
• In some parts of Burkina Faso there exists the belief that registering a child can be a bad omen and among other consequences, spell death for the child. Clearly such beliefs are incompatible with the concept of registering births and cause birth registration systems to fail.
  
  
• In Cameroon, the Baka Pygmies are significantly under-represented in the 80 per cent national birth registration rate, with a recent census showing that up to 98 percent of children in Baka communities do not have a birth certificate. Plan Cameroon has been working with indigenous populations for over six years, helping them gain official recognition from the government. The local authorities have now officially accepted four Baka communities as recognised villages. Plan has also helped more than 200 Baka adults to get an identity card which, in turn, means that they can now get a birth certificate for their unregistered children.
  
  
• At the Third Asia Regional Conference on Birth Registration (January 2003) an example was given of a child of nearly 18 years of age sentenced to the death penalty. His lawyers were attempting to get relief for him under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, he faced difficulty in getting true justice because he could not prove his exact date of birth due to the absence of a birth certificate.