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IPS164 Sam N.
Barriers to Birth Registration
6. Parents may opt to skip registration of the birth and wait until the child is old enough to apply
for a national identification card.
7. Barriers related to the registration system:
1. The family may be part of a marginalized population, such as an Indigenous group, that is not
well served by the civil registration system.
2. Registration fees, may discourage parents from registering a birth.
3. The civil registration system may not allow the registration of a birth to an unmarried mother..
4. Requirements for the delayed registration of a birth may be so onerous that the parents are not
able or are unwilling to complete the registration process.
5. Registrars who are frequently absent from their office may prevent parents from registering a
recent birth, particularly if the child dies during this interval and the parent assumes registration is
no longer necessary.
6. Birth notification forms completed at the hospital may be lost during transfer to the local
registration office.
7. Hospital staff may refuse to forward the notification form to the local civil registration office
until the family pays the hospital bill for delivery care.

6. Solutions
Useful solutions are those that produce a positive result and are within the
means of the country to sustain. Expensive, donor-driven activities may
produce a short-term gain but will not be sustainable. There are a number of
solutions available to address barriers to birth registration, none of them
perfect and some requiring outside assistance to initiate. These solutions will
be addressed in turn, with discussion of the pros, cons and potential impact
of each on the birth registration system.
Comprehensive assessment of civil registration system. An approach that
has proved successful for civil registration improvement is to begin with a
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comprehensive assessment of the system. International organizations and other
groups have published detailed guidelines on comprehensive assessments and
many organizations are promoting these assessments in low- and medium-
resource countries. The assessments serve to identify major system problems
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or barriers, and by organizing workshops to discuss the results can assure
agreement across government on the changes needed.
Amend registration law to facilitate birth registration. Changes to
registration law could address a number of the barriers mentioned above:
deputizing health personnel or others to provide information legally
acceptable as the basis for birth registration; removing registration fees;
removing onerous requirements for delayed registration of births; ensuring
that births to unmarried mothers are registered; ensuring that alternative

5 World Health Organization. Improving the quality and use of birth, death and cause-of-
death information: guidance for a standards-based review of country practices. WHO,
Geneva, 2010.
6 United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Improving National Civil Registration
and Vital Statistics Systems in Africa. Volume 1: Guideline for Conducting Comprehensive
Assessments of National Systems. UNECA, Addis Ababa, 2016.
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