Majority of children in Pakistan are deprived of their fundamental right of birth registration as only 27 percent of births were registered in last nine years (2000-2009) whereas among the registered births, 32 percent were registered in the country’s urban areas and only 24 percent in the rural areas. According to the figures issued by the UNICEF Pakistan here on Tuesday the birth registration is very low in Pakistan. The statistics were issued in connection with the Universal Children’s Day which would be marked on 20 November. This year’s theme of Children’s Day is ‘Make Every Child Count’ with a message that birth registration is the first right of every child born in Pakistan.
According to the UNICEF data, the birth registration ratio between the rich and the poor remained 2 to 1 during the last ten years.
In 2007-08 only 77 births were registered in Punjab whereas in 2008 KPK registered 20 births, in Balochistan only 1 birth was registered in 2004, FATA registered 1 birth in 2007-08 and AJK registered only 24 births during the same year.
SPARC Executive Director Arshad Mehmood, when contacted, told Pakistan Today that apart from the legal acknowledgement of a child’s existence, the registration of births is fundamental to the realisation of a number of right and needs like access to heath care, immunisation, enrollment in school at the right age, getting a passport, opening a bank account, obtaining credit, right to vote or finding employment etc. “In Criminal Justice System in Pakistan children have to prove the right age to get the privileges of being a child and if the right age is not registered than he has to face the offenses like other criminals, which is violation of child rights,” he lamented. He explained that Pakistan has been a signatory for more than 21 years but no due attention had been paid towards addressing the child rights issue so far, and laws to address the child rights are very few and unfortunately what we have are still waiting for implementation.
He said, “Even though the relevant ministry is devolved to the provinces, no serious efforts or movement has been started to address the child birth registration issue, and unfortunately there is no national body to deal with the child rights in Pakistan.” He said that in addition to issues relating to protection, a functioning system of birth and civil registration ensures that the country has an up-to-date and reliable database for planning and maintaining education, health and other social services for the community.
According to the UNICEF fact-sheet, globally, South Asia has the largest number of unregistered children, with approximately 22.5 million, or over 40 percent of the world’s unregistered births in 2000. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 70 percent of all births went unregistered, in Middle East and North Africa one third of children born were not registered, while in East Asia and the Pacific, 22 percent of births were not registered in 2000. While the right to a name and nationality is well established, however in 2000 alone, some 50 million births went unregistered and over 40 percent of all estimated births worldwide that year. These unregistered children are almost always from poor, marginalized poor displaced families or from countries where systems of registration are not in place or functional.
