under the radar and under protected The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established on 14 December 1950 by the United Nations General Assembly. The agency is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily when conditions permit, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country. It is also the agency mandated by the United Nations General Assembly to identify, prevent, and reduce statelessness, as well as provide international protection for stateless persons worldwide. In more than six decades, the agency has helped tens of millions of people restart their lives. Today, UNHCR works in more than 125 countries and continues to help some 33.9 million persons. unhcr.org Founded 75 years ago, Plan is one of the oldest and largest children’s development organisations in the world. It works in 50 developing countries across Africa, Asia and the Americas to promote child rights and lift millions of children out of poverty. Plan is independent, with no religious, political or governmental affiliations and works with nearly 58,000 communities each year, covering a population of 56.5 million children. Plan’s vision is of a world in which all children realise their full potential in societies that respect people’s rights and dignity. Our work is guided by the UN convention of the Rights of the Child. Plan aims to achieve lasting improvements in the quality of life of deprived children in developing countries, through a process that unites people across cultures and adds meaning and value to their lives, by: · enabling deprived children, their families and their communities to meet their basic needs and to increase their ability to participate in and benefit from their societies · building relationships to increase understanding and unity among peoples of different cultures and countries · promoting the rights and interests of the world’s children. Plan has been working on achieving universal birth registration since 1998, launching a global campaign – Count Every Child – to focus on the issue in 2005. Since then, over 40 million people, mainly children, have been registered, with hundreds of millions more benefiting from improved policy and legislative change that Plan campaigned for. plan-international.org/birthregistration 2