Archbishop Desmond Tutu launched a global campaign on Tuesday to record the birth of every child, saying nearly 50-million babies born every year are not registered and thus have no official identity and are often barred from education or health care.
”It is, in a very real sense, a matter of life and death,” the South African Nobel Peace Prize winner said. ”The unregistered child is a nonentity. The unregistered child does not exist. How can we live with the knowledge that we could have made a
difference?”
In 1989, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child imposed an obligation on countries to register every child immediately after birth. Sixteen years later, every country in the world has ratified the convention except the United States and Somalia.
But according to the latest figures from the UN Children’s Fund, over 48-million births each year — 36% of births worldwide — are not registered, the vast majority in developing countries.
The British aid agency Plan, which released a 50-page report entitled Universal Birth Registration — a Universal Responsibility to coincide with the campaign, said it is impossible to know how many unregistered children there are because
they cannot be counted. But it said the best estimates put the overall, worldwide number at more than 500-million.
Tutu told a news conference that a birth document ”proves who you are,” and without one children and adults are often barred from education, health care, citizenship and the right to vote.
”Governments worldwide are failing the world’s children, as millions of youngsters without a birth certificate find it very difficult to prove their age or nationality,” said Thomas Miller, the former United States ambassador to Greece and Plan’s new chief executive.
”And parents whose children go missing during disasters like the tsunami or because they are abducted by traffickers may even be unable to get help with tracing their sons or daughters because they cannot prove the age of their children — or in many cases that their children even exist,” he said.
The region with the most unregistered children is South Asia, with 63% of births not recorded every year, followed by sub-Saharan Africa with 55%.
In Central and Eastern Europe countries and the former Soviet bloc, 23% of children aren’t legally registered. In East Asia and the Pacific, the figure is 19%, in the Middle East and North Africa 16%, in Latin America and the Caribbean 15%, and in industrialised countries 2%.
Miller blamed neglect and apathy among governments for the failure to register children.
”This is not high technology and it’s not expensive,” he said, noting that in Cambodia, which he just visited, 2,4-million people were registered in less than four months using fingerprints.
Philippines Senator Companera Pia Cayetano said her country was aiming for 100% birth registration by 2010 and called for the lowering or elimination of registration fees.
Plan is currently working with local partners in over 40 countries to boost the rates of child registration, Miller said.
”This is going to be a work in progress for the rest of our lives,” he said.
Tutu urged those who successfully fought for an end to apartheid to join the campaign to ensure that every child in the world is registered and has an identity.
”I never give up,” he said. ”I believe human beings are fundamentally good and that when people want to do good, they will do the right thing.” – Sapa-AP