Brussels, 05/07/2012 (Agence Europe) - The EU and UNESCO are joining forces to finance a new project which aims to make birth registration compulsory in eight countries of Africa, Asia and the Pacific, which they hope will ensure that millions of people thus have a right to access to healthcare, education and to voting in elections. The announcement was made on Thursday 5 July by Andris Piebalgs, European Development Commissioner, just a few days before the world family planning summit to be held in London on 11 July, coinciding with World Population Day.
The project will ensure that birth registration is free of charge in four African countries (Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Uganda) and three small Pacific island states (Kiribati, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Isles), which are all members of the ACP Group of States, and in one Asian country (Myanmar).
The new system of birth registration will make up for failings in the existing registration systems - where these actually exist - by using digital technology and allowing people living in outlying areas to have access to it, and also because it will facilitate access to health and social protection schemes. This is a sizeable challenge as declaration of birth is often considered as the child's first right. Without registration, children do not technically exist, do not know who their parents are and have no rights.
In Asia and in Africa, fewer than half of the children born are registered. Children in the poorest households are twice as likely to be unregistered as children from the richest households. Also, the gap between registration of births in urban and rural areas continues to be significant. The EU and UNESCO are hoping that the project will allow this gap to be reduced by half at least within three years.
The global summit on family planning is jointly organised by the United Kingdom and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the hope of changing the lives of millions of women in the developing world. World leaders aim to allow an additional 120 million women in the poorest countries to have access to contraceptives and also to reproductive health services and information. (AN/transl.jl)