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

A/HRC/RES/52/25View PDF

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the Human Rights Council, under agenda item 3Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development, published in 2023.

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?

7 topics

Anti-Discrimination Measures Birth Reporting Civil Registration Digital Technology Equality Before the Law Human Rights Technical Cooperation

What does this mandate say?

24 operative paragraphs

Expresses deep concern at the fact that, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, the births of 166 million children under the age of 5 worldwide have never been officially registered, despite ongoing efforts to increase the global rate of birth registration;

Also expresses deep concern at the fact that, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, about 70 million children under the age of 5 who are registered worldwide do not have proof of registration in the form of a birth certificate;

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 single mothers, 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, and that all efforts should be made to register all children as early as possible, but not later than one year after their birth to include them in vital statistics;

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

Calls upon States:

To identify and reform laws and policies in order to enable immediate birth registration for all and to prevent all forms of discrimination against women and children in access to birth registration and the realization of their right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law, and identify and reform laws and policies that prevent women from passing on their nationality to their children;

To identify and remove physical, administrative, procedural, financial, practical and any other barriers that discriminate or impede access to birth registration and the issuance of birth certificates, in order to ensure that birth registration procedures are universal, accessible, simple, expeditious, effective and provided at minimal or no cost, and to remove documentation requirements that are difficult or impossible to fulfil, in particular for 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 their territory and, in accordance with relevant international and national laws, abroad, either by increasing the number of service delivery points, including by leveraging opportunities provided by the health sector, or by other means, such as mobile birth registration officials in rural and remote areas, promoting community awareness and working to address the barriers faced by persons, especially children in vulnerable situations, in their access to birth registration;

To strengthen interoperability and linkages with other sectors, in particular the health, educational and social protection sectors, while respecting the right to privacy, in order to ensure prompt birth registration in health facilities and to facilitate catch-up mechanisms for older children or adults, so that all persons may have access to a legal identity;

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, in particular 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 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 the birth registration process is aimed at collecting the necessary information available on an individual, including family relations, and to provide persons, including adoptees, with as much information as possible regarding their origins, when requested by them, according to national laws and while respecting the right to privacy;

To ensure that the minimum information necessary to uphold an individual’s rights is recorded on birth certificates, including the basic characteristics that comprise an individual’s legal identity, as defined according to the United Nations operational definition of legal identity, and, whenever possible, the child’s family relations such as the parents’ names, and to take all measures necessary to protect persons from discrimination, violence and harm when determining additional information to be included in a birth certificate by, inter alia, excluding those elements that may be used to discriminate against any individual on any ground, and protecting personal information obtained through birth registration or other civil registration processes;

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 all 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, stateless women, separated or unaccompanied girls, and other women and girls in vulnerable situations, and also to ensure the timely and equal registration of all births and other vital events;

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

Encourages States to ensure that registration documents are accessible, comprehensible and available for persons with disabilities and in minority and Indigenous 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, in particular the United Nations Legal Identity Agenda, 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 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;

Invites the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 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;

Requests the High Commissioner to prepare, in consultation with States, United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, civil society and other relevant stakeholders, a comprehensive study on the use of digital technologies to achieve universal birth registration, its best practices, challenges and opportunities, and potential mechanisms to close the gap between the number of children whose births are reported as registered and those who actually have a birth certificate, and to submit the report thereon to the Human Rights Council at its fifty-eighth session;

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

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