229 Million Children Are Officially Invisible
According to a new report, the births of one in three kids under the age of five have not been registered.
Registering babies at birth may be a routine, almost automated process in the United States, but it's a rarity in some impoverished nations in both South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, according to a new report released on Tuesday by UNICEF. In all, there are nearly 230 million children in the world who are nameless and stateless. And they may languish in anonymity for a good portion of their early lives.
Living without any proof of your existence can be a major challenge. The associated paperwork is often necessary to secure healthcare, education, and other basic rights. And children who don't have identification are also left at higher risk of displacement, exploitation, and human trafficking. In the chaos of war or disaster, reuniting children separated from their family can be difficult, if not impossible, without proper documentation. And with no formal proof of age, marriage, military service, and employment may all become a reality much sooner than appropriate.
The problem is particularly acute in India, where 71 million children under the age of five go undocumented by the government. Though India leads the world in sheer number of uncounted children, its rate of birth registration—at 41 percent—means that the civil administration there is actually outperforming the bureaucracies in many of the other countries mentioned in the report. Somalia, for example, does not record the existence of a staggering 97 percent of its young children. Here's a list of the ten countries with the lowest birth registration rates:
- Somalia (3 percent of children registered)
- Liberia (4 percent)
- Ethiopia (7 percent)
- Zambia (14 percent)
- United Republic of Tanzania (16 percent)
- Chad (16 percent)
- Yemen (17 percent)
- Guinea Bissau (24 percent)
- Pakistan (27 percent)
- Democratic Republic of the Congo (28 percent)
Though a child's gender isn't a predictor in this paperwork game, socioeconomic