Asia to take action over unregistered births

Asia to take action over unregistered births

Agence France-Presse, Bangkok

Asian nations vowed on Thursday to take action over the millions of unregistered births in the region, saying it denied children access to education and healthcare and made them vulnerable to exploitation.

At a United Nations conference in the Thai capital, representatives from 25 nations heard that two thirds of the world's 50 million children unregistered at birth each year live in Asia.

"Without this first document, all other rights are put in jeopardy: the right to a nationality, to health care and education," said conference organizers Unicef and child welfare organization Plan International.

"Without an official identity, children are far more vulnerable to exploitation, trafficking, child labor, early marriage and military recruitment," they said in a statement.

The registration of newborns is a right enshrined in the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is ratified by all governments in the region.

But Unicef said the poor and the marginalized are most likely to be denied their registration rights, with girls in particular being vulnerable.

At the conclusion of the conference, Afghanistan, which has suffered from decades of conflict and is struggling to rebuild its society, undertook to register all its children under the age of one by March 2004.

"Afghanistan's system of birth registration has fallen into disuse due to conflict and breakdown of the infrastructure," said the country's chief of foreign affairs in the ministry of the interior, Brigadier Said Aziz Ahmed.

"We will achieve this target with a mass communication campaign and with the help of district level mobile teams providing a door-to-door service," he added.