Sophie ShuggSenior Child Rights Specialist 

Research objective

Investigated the benefits of birth registration:

• How birth registration directly benefits individual children

• Whether birth registration is used by governments for planning and policy purposes

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ABOUT THE RESEARCH

Case studies were undertaken in four countries

• India• Kenya• Sierra Leone• Vietnam

Mixed methodology• 119 interviews• 41 focus groups • Statistical analysis

Denise (age 13) and her sister Violet (age 15) live alone in a village in Rwanda. Their father died in the 1994 genocide and their mother died after many year’s struggle with HIV. Plan is working in Rwanda to help orphaned children like Denise and her sister access education, vocational training and psychosocial support.

KEY CONCLUSIONS

1. Birth registration should not be implemented in isolation

2. Consider the potential unintended consequences of incentives and initiatives to promote universal birth registration

3. Need to concentrate on increasing birth registration rates among the most vulnerable and excluded

4. All efforts to advocate for effective, comprehensive, and rights-based CRVS systems

NEPAL: Universal Birth Registration ProgramThe birth registration rate for under-fives in Nepal is 42%. In districts where Plan International work, the average rate of birth registration is 70%.

NEPAL: Plan’s approach

• Increase awareness around the right to birth registration

• Birth and other vital events registration mechanism strengthened

• Birth registration integrated with community health services and early childhood education

• Government and civil society organisations use birth registration data for the purposes of planning and monitoring

Vital Event Registration System

Strengthen a systems based approach

Increase government capacity

Ensuring disaggregated data is collected

Increasing awareness

• Media campaigns, peer-to-peer education, door-to-door visits, and street dramas

• Training community groups

• Celebrating of the vital events registration day

Do birth registration campaigns reinforce discrimination if there unequal access to registration?

Integrated approach

• Mobile health clinics that include:o vaccinationso birth registrationo ECCD

• Integrating birth registration in emergency responses

• Integrating birth registration with child protection programing

What are the unintended consequences of the incentive approach?

Birth Registration Data

“If you don’t know how many people or how many localities don’t have safe drinking water you wouldn’t know how many wells to go and dig. If you don’t know how many deaths occur as a result of childbirth, you don’t know the magnitude of the intervention [that’s needed]. You need data, you need information… A lot of the information that is routine in developed countries is not routine here.” Government Official, Ministry of Planning

Together we can transform the world for children.

Children learning at a primary school in Cambodia. Plan aims to strengthen the primary education for girls belonging to ethnic minorities, of whom only half even begin primary school.