According to a report released on Wednesday by UNICEF, international efforts to increase the number of children registered at birth have paid off in the past decade, with the number of registered children rising to about 75%, up from only about 60% at the dawn of the new millennium.
However, that still leaves 166 million children age 5 or under unregistered, the report found, and around 237 million without formal birth certificates. And bringing that number to zero will require more work and building on strategies that have demonstrated success, according to the report.
"More effort is needed to reach the goal of universal birth registration and to improve civil registries to the point where such gains are irreversible," the report said. "If commitment is sustained and programmes strengthened, ongoing progress will gain momentum, and the promise of fulfilling every child's birth right will be achieved."
The organization recommended that programs looking to achieve that goal try to engage with communities directly and make use of technology to make registration more convenient.
Being registered at birth — and especially having a birth certificate or other document that can prove identity — can make a huge difference in a person's life. This type of documentation helps curb child labor, human trafficking and underage military conscription. It ensures that people are recognized as citizens and are able to travel internationally. It makes it possible to own and inherit property.
And in many cases, it is also necessary to access social services, health care, financial institutions, education and the legal system.
"In almost all societies, a birth certificate is a basic legal document that gives identity to a child," according to the United Nations' Human Development Reports division.
And in many countries, birth certificates are nearly universal.
"In developed societies, we take it for granted that all children are registered at birth," analysts for the division wrote in 2015. "We hardly think about birth ... registration because we rarely are the initiators; it is usually the institution where the birth takes place that registers the baby."
In other countries, however, registering a birth and obtaining a birth certificate are more difficult. Many children are not born in hospitals, and parents might have to travel to another town or city in order to register the birth with the proper government agency, according to UNICEF. In some places, doing so also costs money, which some parents cannot afford.
Furthermore, UNICEF noted in its report that in some countries, certain racial, ethnic or religious groups face additional difficulties. For instance, in Bangladesh, the country's Urdu-speaking minority was only granted citizenship in 2008, and many people in the community are still uncertain about how to go about registering their children.
In other cases, laws or customs may prevent mothers from registering their children themselves without a husband or male relative, according to a report from the international aid group Plan.
Overall, though, the UNICEF report showed that there has been significant progress over the past two decades in getting more children registered. The number of unregistered children has declined, and most of those who are registered also have a birth certificate.
The biggest gains have been made in South Asia, especially India, according to the report. Overall, registration in the region increased from 23% in 2000 to 70% today, the report found, and the region also managed to narrow the registration gap between wealthy families and low-income families.
Other regions, on the other hand, made less progress, with much of the progress concentrated among better-off families. Sub-Saharan Africa, which has the highest rate of unregistered children, overall saw the registration gap widen between low- and high-income families.
The number of registered children in West and Central Africa increased from 40% to 51% from 2000 to the present and Eastern and Southern Africa increased from 34% to 40% during the same time. Most of those gains, though, were for wealthier children, UNICEF found.
Over the past 19 years, registration of children under five in Latin America went from 76% to 94%; in Eastern Europe increased to 99% from 89%; moved from 80% to 91% in East Asia; and ticked up in the Middle East and North Africa from 90% to 92%. Registration in North America held steady at about 100%.
In order to expand on this progress, UNICEF recommends making registration part of other systems, such as health care and education, making it more likely that unregistered children will be identified and that they can be registered, as well as increasing the use of technology to make registration easier and engaging with communities to support registration efforts.
"To create effective, sustainable change, community members – particularly parents and community leaders – must understand how and why birth registration benefits their families," the report said. "Only then will behaviours and social norms begin to change."
These strategies are consistent with approaches that have proved successful so far.
For instance, Ghana was able to increase its registration rate for children under 5 to 71% by 2008, according to a World Health Organization study in 2013, far outpacing other sub-Saharan countries. The study found that the country did so by expanding the window for free registration, using community volunteers, and linking registration to other celebrations.
UNICEF advocated in its Wednesday report that efforts to register children and ensure they have birth certificates increase, noting that birth registration is a right under the U.N.'s Convention of the Rights of the Child.
"Every birth should be recorded, and every child should be recognized before the law," the report said. "Only then can societies worldwide be truly inclusive and equitable."
A UNICEF representative was not available for further comment.
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--Editing by Katherine Rautenberg.