Birth Registration and the Right of Everyone to Recognition Everywhere as a Person Before the Law

A/HRC/RES/43/5No PDF available

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 3Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development, published in 2020.

What other versions does this mandate have?

7 versions · 2012–2026

This is an older version — the most recent is A/HRC/RES/61/24

2026A/HRC/RES/61/24Birth registration and the right of everyone to recognition everywhere as a person before the lawLatestCompare with previous version
2023A/HRC/RES/52/25Birth registration and the right of everyone to recognition everywhere as a person before the lawCompare with previous version
2020A/HRC/RES/43/5Birth registration and the right of everyone to recognition everywhere as a person before the lawCompare with previous version
2017A/HRC/RES/34/15Birth registration and the right of everyone to recognition everywhere as a person before the lawCompare with previous version
2015A/HRC/RES/28/13Birth registration and the right of everyone to recognition everywhere as a person before the lawCompare with previous version

Versions are identified automatically by matching titles within the same organ (~97% accuracy on a manual audit).

What subjects does this mandate have?

5 topics

Anti-Discrimination Measures Birth Reporting Civil Registration Equality Before the Law Human Rights

What does this mandate say?

24 operative paragraphs

Expresses deep concern at the fact that, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, nearly 237 million children still do not have a birth certificate despite ongoing efforts to increase the global rate of birth registration;

Reminds States of their obligation to register all births without discrimination of any kind, and also reminds States that birth registration should take place immediately after birth, in the country where children are born, including the children of migrants, non-nationals, asylum seekers, refugees and stateless persons, in accordance with international human rights law and national law, and that late birth registration should be limited to those cases that would otherwise result in a lack of registration;

Reaffirms that the provision of legal identity for all, including birth registration by 2030, can contribute to prevent, inter alia, poverty, marginalization, exclusion, discrimination, violence, statelessness, illegal adoption, abduction, sale, exploitation and abuse, including when they take the form of child labour, human trafficking, child, early and forced marriage and other harmful practices, and child recruitment, and can also assist in the reunification of families separated by conflict, disaster or humanitarian crisis;

Welcomes the report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on best practices and specific measures to ensure access to birth registration, particularly for those children most at risk, in which the High Commissioner addressed the situation of children marginalized and living in situations of conflict, poverty, emergency or vulnerability, including girls, children belonging to minority groups, children with disabilities, indigenous children, and children of migrants, asylum seekers, refugees and stateless persons;

Calls upon States:

To identify and reform laws or policies that discriminate against women and children and compromise access to birth registration and the realization of their right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law;

To identify and remove physical, administrative, procedural, practical and any other barriers that discriminate or impede access to birth registration, in order to ensure that birth registration procedures are universal, accessible, simple, expeditious, effective and provided at minimal or no cost, to remove documentation requirements that are difficult or impossible to fulfil, and to pay due attention to, inter alia, those barriers relating to gender, indigeneity, culture, religion, poverty, social or economic status, disability, women’s equal nationality rights, age, adoption processes, nationality, statelessness, displacement, illiteracy, detention contexts, armed conflict and humanitarian situations, and to persons in vulnerable situations;

To establish or strengthen existing institutions at all levels responsible for birth registration, including through the development of comprehensive civil registration systems and the preservation and security of such records, to ensure adequate training for registration officers, to allocate sufficient and adequate human, technical and financial resources to fulfil their mandate, and to increase the accessibility of birth registration facilities within its territory and, in accordance with relevant international and national laws, abroad, either by increasing the number or through other means, such as mobile birth registration officials in rural areas, promoting community awareness and working to address the barriers faced by persons who may be in vulnerable situations, such as women and girls, persons with disabilities, indigenous children, children belonging to minorities, children of migrants, asylum seekers, refugees and stateless persons, in their access to birth registration;

To implement targeted programmes to reach children living in the most remote and excluded circumstances, including by integrating the provision of birth registration with the delivery of other essential services, particularly health services, and utilizing mobile registration units, technology and other innovative solutions to advance decentralized registration procedures;

To take all appropriate measures to permanently store and protect civil registration records and to prevent the loss or destruction of records due to, inter alia, emergency or armed conflict situations, including through the use of digital and new technologies as a means to facilitate and universalize access to birth registration, to prevent the loss of children’s personal data and to ensure continuity of birth registration during and after situations of conflict and humanitarian crisis, and also to strengthen civil registration and vital statistics, which are key for the collection of disaggregated data for monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals;

To ensure that only the minimum information necessary to uphold an individual’s rights is recorded on birth certificates, such as the child’s name, gender, date and place of birth, and, when available, the parents’ names, citizenship and addresses;

To assess potential risks to privacy and to take steps to protect individuals from discrimination and harm when determining the information included in a birth certificate, particularly details concerning origin, gender, race, ethnicity, social origin, language, religion and parents’ marital status, and to protect personal information obtained through birth registration or other civil registration processes that may be used to discriminate against an individual;

To raise awareness of birth registration continuously at the national, regional and local levels, including by engaging in collaboration with all relevant actors, such as national human rights institutions, the public and private sectors and civil society organizations, in public campaigns that raise awareness of the importance of birth registration for effective access to services and the enjoyment of human rights;

To ensure that lack of birth registration or documents of proof of birth does not constitute an obstacle to access to and the enjoyment of relevant national services and programmes, in accordance with national and international human rights law;

To ensure individual documentation, including in post-conflict and other migration flows, of internally displaced women, refugee and asylum-seeking women and separated and unaccompanied girls and other marginalized groups, and also to ensure the timely and equal registration of all births, marriages, divorces and deaths;

To make every effort to tackle the differences found in the prevalence of birth registration between boys and girls;

To strengthen global partnerships and to provide the cooperation and assistance necessary to enhance technical capacity-building with a view to attaining Sustainable Development Goal target 16.9 by 2030;

Encourages States to ensure that registration documents are accessible, comprehensible and available in minority and local languages, whenever possible;

Invites States and other relevant stakeholders to work towards ensuring universal birth registration through, inter alia, cooperation, innovation, the exchange of good practices and technical assistance, including through the universal periodic review and other relevant mechanisms of the Human Rights Council;

Encourages States to request technical assistance, if required, from relevant United Nations bodies, agencies, funds and programmes and other relevant stakeholders in order to fulfil their obligation to undertake birth registration as a means of respecting the right of everyone to be recognized everywhere as a person before the law;

Invites States and other actors to consider endorsing the Principles on Identification for Sustainable Development, which aim to strengthen identification systems and to foster cooperation around the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals;

Invites relevant United Nations agencies, funds and programmes and other relevant stakeholders to cooperate with States in providing technical assistance, upon request, and calls upon them to ensure that persons with no birth registration are not discriminated against in any of their programmes;

Requests the High Commissioner to identify and actively pursue opportunities to collaborate with the United Nations Statistics Division and other relevant United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, as well as other relevant stakeholders, in order to strengthen existing policies and programmes aimed at universal birth registration and vital statistics development, and to ensure that they are based on international standards, taking into account best practices, and are implemented in accordance with relevant international human rights obligations;

Decides to consider this issue, in accordance with its programme of work, at its fifty-second session.

Paragraph content is machine-extracted from UN documents. For authoritative content, please refer to the official UN document.

No headings found in this document.

Who created this mandate?

What other versions does this mandate have?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What does this mandate say?

Table of contents