MILLIONS of children in Pakistan are being denied one of their most basic rights.

Of the 4.5 million children born in Pakistan every year, an estimated three million do not have their birth recorded. Officially speaking, they do not exist. It is estimated that there are today nearly 60 million children in Pakistan, under the age of 18 years, who do not have an official identity, a recognised name and a citizenship.

This situation is all the more shocking because birth registration is needed to open the door to other fundamental rights including access to education and healthcare, participation in society and protection.

The right to birth registration is enshrined in the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention is a legally binding international instrument to which Pakistan is a signatory. The right to birth registration is underlined in several other human rights standards.

Lack of birth registration closes doors on children’s futures. Even though there are no uniform national guidelines in Pakistan requiring parents to produce a birth certificate at the time of school enrolment, lack of birth registration is believed to be keeping significant numbers of rural poor children out of school.

It may also be restricting their access to social protection programmes linked to the provision of health prevention and healthcare services, including immunisation.

A child whose birth is not registered does not have even the minimal protection that a birth certificate provides in Pakistan against early and forced marriage, illegal adoption and trafficking. Birth registration can help in ensuring that children are enrolled in schools at the right age and aids enforcement of laws relating to the minimum age for employment.

Birth registration ensures that children who come in conflict with the law are treated as juveniles, given special protection and not treated as adults. It can help separated children and those who are without any adult care to be reunited with their families, and allows children to claim their rightful inheritance.

In later life, the unregistered child is unable to get an identification card, a passport, open a bank account or obtain credit.

Finding employment can be seriously hindered.

For any government, birth registration is important for effective planning for the provision of services right down to the village level. Effective registration of births will allow Pakistan to measure trends, differentiate among population groups about their needs and identify geographic, social and gender disparities. In practical terms, information about the number of births will help authorities to know the needs for essential services like schools and hospitals, and to plan accordingly.

More than two decades after Pakistan signed and ratified the Convention, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, a body of independent experts that monitors implementation of the Convention, noted its concerns that more than 70 per cent of children in Pakistan are not registered at birth. They were especially concerned about the situation of girls, children belonging to religious or minority groups, refugee children and children living in rural areas.

There are unfortunately a multitude of barriers to the universalisation of birth registration in Pakistan, including costs associated with registration and low awareness about its value and importance. There are also regional, gender and economic disparities in terms of the status of birth registration. In more remote areas, such as Balochistan and Fata, surveys reveal that only one per cent of children are registered.

It is vital that birth registration becomes a matter of urgent priority. Children must be allowed the right to exist legally and have the door opened to their rights as children. Unicef will continue to work closely with the government to ensure this.

The writer is deputy representative Unicef Pakistan.