19 February 2005	Saturday	09 Muharram 1426

ISLAMABAD, Feb 18: Only 20 per cent births are registered in the country, Chairperson National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) Brig (retired) Moeen said , while speaking at the launch of International Birth Registration Campaign at a local hotel here on Thursday.

The campaign has been launched by Plan Pakistan, an international NGO. It will be launched in 40 countries. Moeen said Nadra and other partners were implementing birth registration projects in NWFP, Punjab, Sindh, and Balochistan.

In Lahore, for instance, he said, work was going on and Nadra had registered 71,208 births in the past two months. The Punjab government is shortly launching a Birth Registration (BR) project by computerizing all union councils of the province.

Plan Pakistan Country Director Dr Purnima Chattopadhayay-Dutt said over 50 million children a year around the world were never registered. This in turn will have implications on their lives, future and on the country they are from.

Without a birth certificate, a child may have difficulty in accessing basic rights such as education and health care. For example in a number of countries a child requiring vaccinations will be turned away from the health care centre if the parents are unable to produce a birth certificate.

She further reiterated that to address the issue of low birth registration, advocacy and awareness-raising efforts were required at local as well as at national level. For this, Plan Pakistan is working with the local government departments, Nadra and international partners to improve the registration systems and raise awareness of all concerned.

Those without birth certificates, she said, were vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. "If a child is trafficked across the border, his identity cannot be proved," she said.

They are more likely to grow up without access to education, health care, civil rights or proper protection. The issues of early marriages and juvenile justice are other issues which are directly linked with the birth registration. Director National Commission for Child Welfare and Development Mohammed Hassan Mangi said the government was fully committed to safeguarding the child rights.

Giving the chronological background of birth registration in the country, he said in 1964 the government had a mandatory birth registration system. In those days, the birth registration ratio remained 30 to 35 per cent in urban and 10 to 20 per cent in rural areas that still persists.

The main hurdle, he noted, to implementing Juvenile Justice System Ordinance remained unavailability of the exact age proof that was directly related to birth registration.