Birth registration at a glance: Key Facts • Globally, the births of 166 million children under age 5 (about 1 in 4) have never been recorded. • Progress has been achieved primarily in the last 10 years and has reached the poorest children in most regions. • South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are home to 87 per cent of all unregistered children under age 5 worldwide. • Without the progress of the last two decades, the number of unregistered children today would have reached 266 million. • Possession of a birth certificate is less common than registration: 237 million children under age 5 lack official proof of registration in the form of a birth certificate. • • Of all children under age 1 worldwide, roughly 3 in 10 (about 40 million) have not had their births registered. The world is not on track to reach SDG target 16.9 by 2030. 1 in 3 countries (accounting for about one third of the global population of children under 5) will need to speed up progress in order to achieve universal birth registration by 2030. • A rapidly growing child population, coupled with slow rates of change, means that, unless progress is accelerated, the total number of unregistered children in subSaharan Africa will continue to increase and will exceed 100 million by 2030. • Around 4 in 10 infants globally (about 56 million) lack a birth certificate. • Today, about 3 in 4 children under age 5 are registered compared to 6 in 10 around 2000. UNICEF Data and Analytics Section Division of Data, Analytics, Planning and Monitoring 3 United Nations Plaza New York, NY 10017, USA Email: data@unicef.org Website: data.unicef.org