27 ENDURING OBSTACLES TO BIRTH REGISTRATION IN EUROPE Even taking the stricter approach of defining complete or universal birth registration as a rate of 100%, looking at this issue purely through the angle of statistics is unsatisfactory from a child rights perspective or when seeking to understand whether children in Europe are exposed to the risk of statelessness due to a lack of birth registration. Firstly, 34 countries in Europe which have reportedly reached 100% registration have a “z” behind their entry in the statistical overview. This indicates that an estimate of 100% birth registration has been “assumed”, since the civil registration systems in these countries “are complete and all vital events (including births) are registered”.217 While this may be accurate in statistical terms, i.e. within a particular acceptable margin of error, it is not true in human terms. Not all children born in Europe today, including in those countries with an assumed 100% record, have their birth registered. That gaps persist was apparent in many of the ENS studies conducted in 2015 and is illustrated by the selected case studies presented later in this section. Any child who misses out is a child whose fundamental right to birth registration remains unfulfilled and represents a case that the child rights community should be concerned about. As Plan’s call to action for its global UBR campaign puts it: “Count Every Child”.218 The global birth registration data used for tracking progress on the achievement of this right also does not illuminate historic problems that may in fact endure. The indicator used in the UNICEF report is defined as the percentage of children under age five whose births are registered at the moment of the survey. A child whose birth was not registered but who is already over the age of five when the data was captured will not be visible in these statistics. This is particularly significant in those civil registration systems where the parents are required to present their own birth certificate or ID document in order to register their children. A “historic” problem of birth registration thereby becomes an intergenerational cycle, as the case of 30-year old mother of three, Ljulja, from Serbia demonstrates: “ I just want to get an ID card, like other citizens, and then register the birth of my children. My greatest wish is that my children go to school… There are a lot of good people in our neighbourhood who help us survive, but they cannot help us with the documents”.219 Ljulja’s own birth was never registered and her citizenship not recognised. Her own children now face the same fate. ENS studies in Albania, Estonia, Latvia, Macedonia, Poland and Romania all found that the parents’ lack of identification documents can block a child’s access to birth registration. Research by UNHCR in Armenia reached the same conclusion with respect to births in that country,220 and it was also one of the reasons found for lack of access to birth registration for Syrian refugees in Turkey, as outlined above.221 Indeed, birth registration can be impossible if the mother is undocumented, regardless of the situation of the father.222 BREAKING THE INTERGENERATIONAL CYCLE OF LACK OF DOCUMENTATION One of the ways in which states have sought to deal with an intergenerational lack of documentation is by simplifying the procedures for the late registration of births, making it easier for adults who do not have a birth certificate to acquire one, which can subsequently be used to register their own children’s births. In Serbia, a new court procedure was introduced in 2012 for people who found it impossible to complete the administrative procedure for late birth registration. According to the NGO, Praxis: “In the first year following the enforcement of the amendments to the Law on Non-Contentious Procedure, through which the new court procedure was established, the date and place of birth were determined for approximately 150 persons who could not get registered in the birth registry book. It testifies to the impact of the improved birth registration procedure on the resolution of the problem of legally invisible persons”.223 While the Serbian birth registration system still exhibits some flaws,224 this is an important improvement. The Serbian experience has inspired similar law reform in Montenegro, which adopted its own court procedure for late birth registration in April 2015. Moreover, it is part of a broader set of national and regional initiatives in the countries of Southeast Europe to address the different factors that are obstructing birth registration for vulnerable groups. In October 2011, the governments of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia, adopted a joint declaration on access to civil registration, known as the “Zagreb Declaration”. Among its list of actions for the national level was: “Remove all obstacles to the documentation and registration needs, particularly of vulnerable persons. This may include legal reforms, adequate residency and documentation requirements, the waiving of fees, facilitated birth and subsequent registration and the issuance of identity cards”. 225 When the governments reconvened in 2013 to discuss progress achieved, they noted – among others – examples of law reform, database improvement, increased collaboration between stakeholders, use of mobile registration teams and capacity building. Nevertheless, a number of ongoing concerns were also identified and further recommendations for follow-up action formulated. 226