WUNRN
Please see two parts of this WUNRN
release on the vital importance of Birth Registration.
WUNRN
notes that in countries where child marriage is illegal, children born to
underage mothers/marriages may never be registered, or at least until the
mother becomes of legal age.
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Nearly
40 % of Global Births are Unregistered - World Health Organization
29
October, 2007
GENEVA,
Oct 29 (Reuters) - Nearly 40 percent of the 128 million babies born worldwide
every year are not officially registered, and two thirds of deaths also go
undocumented, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday.
The
U.N. agency said incomplete birth and death registries in many developing
countries "means they cannot count how many people are born and how many
die, and they cannot record how long they live or what kills them".
"When
deaths go uncounted and causes of death are not documented, governments are
unable to design effective health policies, measure their impact or know
whether health budgets are being well-spent," it said in a statement.
Only
31 of the WHO's 193 member states are believed to have reliable cause-of-death
statistics.
The
Health Metrics Network -- which is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation and the British, U.S. and Danish governments -- is helping Cambodia,
Sierra Leone and Syria improve their civil registration systems.
Sally
Stansfield, executive secretary of that WHO-hosted network, said surveys and
surveillance projects had helped fill in the gaps in some countries though
serious problems remained.
"It's
a major challenge," she said.
Children
whose births are not registered are less likely to benefit from basic human
rights, social, political, civic and economic, the WHO said.
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What is Birth
Registration?
A prerequisite for
a legal identity...
Birth
registration is the process by which a child's birth is recorded in the civil
register by the applicable government authority.
It provides the first legal recognition of the child and is generally required for the child to obtain a birth certificate and consequently any other legal documents and rights.
Whilst, in some cases, this is issued to the child at the same time as registration, in others, a separate application must be made. It is important that the registered child receive a birth certificate, since it is this that provides permanent, official and visible evidence of a state's legal recognition of his or her existence as a member of society.
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