On Friday I participated in a Google+ Hangout with the UNICEF’s #ENDViolence Team to learn about the importance of birth registration. Thursday, December 11th marked UNICEF’s 67th year anniversary as one of the world’s leading non-profit organizations focused on the rights and protection of children. In honor of this important milestone, UNICEF released the report “Passport to Protection” which highlights the importance of birth registration in protecting children and giving them an overall basic human right. The right to exist.

Birth registration is the first step in securing a child’s rights to health, education, and freedom from things like trafficking, violence and abuse. It is a passport to protection. Yet around the world, an astounding 230 million children under the age of five – one out of every three children in this age group globally – have never been registered at birth. Tens of millions of more children are without a birth certificate.