World Vision Canada supports the right of every child to have access to free birth registration, and is working to make this happen in Latin America and the Caribbean.

A new World Vision program to increase the rate of birth registrations of children in Bolivia, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic targets those in rural and marginalized areas, where as many as 60 per cent of children have no documentation of their birth. Reasons for the low rate of registrations vary from country to country, but can include the lack of trained registry personnel, long distances for parents to travel to the nearest registry office, or war and internal conflicts. Birth certificates provide children with an official identity and access to social services, such as education and health care.

"It is the children who go unaccounted for, that become the most vulnerable to abuse and neglect, and the denial of their basic rights," says World Vision Canada president Dave Toycen. "The success of these initial programs will help to reverse the current trend that sees far too many of the world's newborns going unregistered. Given World Vision's focus on sustainable child-focused community development, the promotion of a child's right to birth registration is critical to our work."

To carry out this new program, World Vision staff in Bolivia, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador will:

• Work with the local authorities to make birth registration more accessible by training more registrars and creating a mobile registration facility
• Develop multimedia vehicles to promote awareness of the importance of birth registrations, particularly among children and youth who need such documents in order to attend school or receive health care
• Make birth registration a prominent issue in national policy making and discussions on children's rights

The Canadian International Development Agency is contributing $500,000 towards World Vision's $750,000, two-year program.

World Vision is a Christian humanitarian relief and development organization active in more than 90 countries around the world, providing help to more than 85 million people each year.