Registering children at birth and issuing a birth certificate protects their rights and grants access to essential services throughout their lives.
UNICEF’s 2024 report, The Right Start in Life: Global Levels and Trends in Birth Registration, highlights significant regional disparities in birth registration coverage.
The report is based on data collected from 173 countries between 2014 and 2023, covering 98% of the global population of children under five.
Global data
The report highlights that 53 million infants globally remain unregistered, including 37 million without registration and 16 million lacking birth certificates.
Meanwhile, nearly 30% of infants worldwide are unregistered, and 40% lack proof of registration.
Regions with the highest birth registration rates are Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and Northern America, achieving 100% for children under five, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (95%) and Eastern and South-Eastern Asia (94%).
The lowest levels of birth registration are found in Oceania, excluding Australia and New Zealand (26%).
Birth registration in Africa
The report estimates that approximately 200 million children under the age of five lack a birth certificate, with Sub-Saharan Africa recording the lowest birth registration rates.
Globally, 164 million children are unregistered, and over half of them (91 million) reside in Africa. In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 51% of children under five are registered.
Over the past 15 years, Sub-Saharan Africa has made gradual yet consistent progress in improving birth registration rates, with Western Africa showing the most significant advancements during this period.
The table below shows the African countries that recorded the lowest percentage of birth registrations from 2014 – 2023;
| Rank | Country | % Registered Births |
|---|---|---|
|
1 |
Ethiopia |
2 |
|
2 |
Somalia |
3 |
|
3 |
Angola |
12 |
|
4 |
Zambia |
13 |
|
5 |
Chad |
22 |
|
6 |
Mozambique |
25 |
|
7 |
Uganda |
26 |
|
8 |
Lesotho |
28 |
|
9 |
Zimbabwe |
30 |
|
10 |
South Sudan |
34 |
The low birth registrations witnessed across Africa has been linked to factors like illiteracy, poverty and general lack of knowledge.
The report adds that globally, children from the poorest 20% of households are 25% less likely to have their births registered compared to those from the richest 20%.
This gap is especially large in Sub-Saharan Africa, where children in the poorest quintile are half as likely to be registered as those in the richest quintile.
UNICEF highlights a dedicated target (16.9) under Goal 16 of the SDGs, aiming to provide legal identity for all, including birth registration, by 2030.
Achieving this target depends on the establishment of functional civil registration systems.
