Birth and Death Registration to Protect Children’s Rights

Seventeen-year-old Rezia Akter from Kurigram sits with her two-year-old daughter on her lap. When asked how old she was at the time of her marriage, her aunt Amina quickly interrupts, “Girls here usually get married very young.” Neither Rezia nor her daughter has a birth certificate. Without registration, there is no legal tool to prevent child marriage—no proof, no protection. The lack of birth registration intensifies the risks in Rezia’s life; it leaves her and her child invisible in the eyes of the state. That invisibility shapes every aspect of their rights—education, healthcare, and future opportunities.

A recent survey by Caritas Bangladesh unveils a stark reality. Around 32.9% of families living in urban slums have no birth certificate for any of their children. Among street children, 58% lack birth registration, leaving them excluded from schooling and government support services.

In Bangladesh, birth registration remains at only about 50%, and death registration stands at 47%—substantially lower than several South Asian neighbours. Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan have already achieved near-universal registration. The global average for birth registration is around 77%, a figure Bangladesh lags far behind. For half of the country’s population, the very first legal identity they are promised at birth simply never arrives.

The consequences are far-reaching. Schools require birth certificates as the primary document for age verification, so unregistered children often face barriers to entering primary education. Access to immunisation programmes, social protection schemes, disability benefits, or poverty-targeted services—all depend on a verifiable document. Without registration, identifying cases of child labour, child marriage, or human trafficking becomes much more difficult, as authorities lack the legal basis to confirm a person’s identity.

A major cause of this gap lies in the loopholes in the existing Birth and Death Registration Act, 2004. The law places the responsibility for registration squarely on families, not on healthcare facilities. Yet two-thirds of all births in Bangladesh occur in hospitals, clinics, or other health centres. If registration at the point of birth were made mandatory, millions of children could be brought under the system effortlessly. Many countries across the Asia–Pacific region have achieved near-universal registration through this approach. Additional barriers persist, such as extra fees for correcting registration errors, technical glitches and software issues, a shortage of trained personnel and weak inter-agency coordination. Together, these obstacles discourage families, especially the poorest, from seeking the service. Moreover, there is no obligation to use birth and death registration data to produce “Vital Statistics”, which limits the government’s capacity to design evidence-based policies.

Globally, the push for universal civil registration is stronger than ever. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has called for 100% registration by 2030, a commitment Bangladesh has ratified. Achieving SDG target 16.9, legal identity for all, requires a robust and functional registration system. Birth registration is also critical to meeting the other goals, such as education (SDG 4), health (SDG 3), reducing inequality (SDG 10), and eradicating poverty (SDG 1).

Against this backdrop, legal reform and effective implementation are now urgent. All hospitals, clinics, and health facilities must be legally mandated to register births and deaths. Correction fees within 45 days of registration should be waived so that the poor are not penalised. Generating vital statistics from registration data must be made mandatory. Investments in training, staffing, technology and awareness campaigns must be prioritised.

Every child is an asset to the nation, and every child deserves the protection of basic rights. No child should remain unseen. No life should fall outside the count. Strengthening the birth and death registration system is not merely an administrative fix; it is a moral responsibility and a fundamental investment in our children’s future. Now is the time to make every child visible to the state and to the society that promises to protect them.

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The writers are the Bangladesh Country Lead, Data for Health, Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI) and the Executive Director, PROGGA (Knowledge for Progress), respectively