Stateless Indigenous People(s) 103 be unable to vote or stand for election. (…) These children are also at risk of falling victim to child trafficking and are often easy prey for those who exploit their vulnerability recruiting them as street beggars, domestic servants in slave-like arrangements, or as child soldiers.19 Notwithstanding growing international and national attention for the importance of proper birth registration, even in rich and developed States like Australia, ensuring an effective birth registration process, and thereby laying the basis for other rights and preventing statelessness, continues to constitute a challenge. For instance, the Australian government has been unable to tackle the case of several thousands of unregistered Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander births in Australia.20 This seems a bit odd considering the fact the reasons behind this under-registration are believed to include rather practical and overall quite solvable issues such as the high costs of birth registration fees (between $26 and $50); the lack of awareness among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities of the importance of registering newborns and obtaining a birth certificate; language barriers or literacy issues in completing the birth registration process; lack of confidence among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in dealing with authorities and marginalisation from mainstream services; and finally, a general suspicion of authorities amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples stemming, in part, from the policies that led to the so-called Stolen Generations.21 The example again makes clear how important the role of birth registration is as a stepping stone towards the enjoyment of nationality rights. Although birth registration and acquiring a nationality can be seen as two separate issues as well (see above), in this particular example their relation becomes very clear. It does not come as a surprise that the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child recently stated in relation to Australia that: The Committee urges the State party to review its birth registration process in detail to ensure that all children born in Australia are registered at birth, and that no child is disadvantaged due to procedural barriers to registration, including by raising awareness among the Aboriginal population on the importance of birth registration and providing special support to facilitate birth registration for illiterate persons. It further 19 20 21 Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the UN Secretariat (n 16) 142. Drum, ‘Aboriginal people are still denied full citizenship’ ABC News (1 November 2012) <http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4344704.html> accessed 21 October 2013. Ibid. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 98-107