The National Birth Registration Day is being observed in the country today.  The main objective of the day is to highlight the importance of birth registration for every child and adult in the country. At present the rate of birth registration in Bangladesh is not quite satisfactory. However, the government is striving to lift the figure substantially with its Universal Birth Registration strategy.

The issuance of a birth certificate is consistent with the Convention on the Rights of the Child that states that every child should be registered immediately after birth. And in almost all societies a birth certificate is a basic legal document that gives identity to a child, and automatically bestows a number of rights such as the right to health care, nationality, schooling, passport, property ownership, voting, formal employment, or access to banking services.

It is the right of every citizen to have birth registration. Birth registration is now compulsory to get 16 basic services for every citizen. A birth certificate serves as a legal age verification document acknowledging the individual’s existence and status before the law, thus establishing every person’s right to an identity. On July 3, 2006, the Births and Deaths Registration Act came into force. In developed societies people take it for granted that all children are registered at birth and that all people are registered when they die with a medically assigned cause of death. People hardly think about birth and death registration because they rarely are the initiators; it is usually the institution where the birth takes place that registers the baby, and the undertaker who registers a death. People’s involvement is typically limited to choosing a name for the child and signing the registration papers.

In most developing countries, however, the onus is entirely on the family to register a birth or death. Even assuming they are aware of this obligation, it often requires substantial effort and expense and can take several weeks. This in part explains why so many births and deaths go unrecorded. But registration is also vital for national planning. The government should strengthen the drives for birth registration beginning from the cities to the grassroots level. Information technology can improve how authorities access, collect and store birth and death registration data, and cause of death information.   Public representatives like UP chairmen and members and teachers can play their roles in this regard. Generation of awareness can help a lot to achieve the goal.