Slumdog star highlights 40 million invisible children

Slumdog Millionaire actor Anil Kapoor and Archbishop Desmond Tutu told a London conference how a drive to register all children born in the world’s poorest countries, has turned around millions of young lives.

In the UK its something that’s taken for granted, yet there are millions of babies born each year whose births are never registered. Without a birth certificate, there can be no identity card, no passport and no proof of age or parentage, which deprives millions of children of an education and health care and leaves them vulnerable to abuse. Now after being traced and issued with birth certificates in a four year campaign by the child rights organisation, Plan International, more than 40 million people across 32 countries, mostly children, can get health and education services.

"I have met children from communities on the very margins of society,” award-winning actor Anil Kapoor told a meeting in London today. Urging governments around the world to learn from the project’s success, he said “many of these children are already in extremely vulnerable situations because they are homeless or estranged from their families. The lack of a birth certificate makes them invisible to government, and therefore unable to benefit from services that could improve their lives. "Because of this campaign, I believe children will be better protected from all kinds of age-related discrimination, exploitation and abuse and I will continue to champion this cause until we achieve 100 per cent registration," said the Slumdog Millionaire star. Over four years and across three continents and 32 countries, the charity’s Count Every Child campaign has helped to protect hundreds of thousands of children in danger of being trafficked, and girls as young as 12 being forced into illegal marriages – and it is now also saving untold numbers of unborn girls from being aborted because they are the "wrong sex".  

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, who helped launch the campaign in 2005 said: "It is the key that opens the door to the rights and benefits of citizenship. "Universal birth registration is impossible to ignore and entirely possible to achieve, if countries have the political will to make it happen." The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says 51m children are born every year that do not officially exist. In some rural communities in Asia, Africa and Latin America, more than 90 per cent of children are not registered at birth. Because of this, millions are at increased risk of being forced to become child soldiers or prostitutes, of not being returned to their families, of having only limited access to healthcare and education, and being deprived of their legal rights.

 By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children